About three minutes and half only, had elapsed during this experiment, though the time as measured by the relative vividness of the recollected ideas, appeared to me much longer.
Not more than half of the nitrous oxide was consumed. After a minute, before the thrilling of the extremities had disappeared, I breathed the remainder. Similar sensations were again produced; I was quickly thrown into the pleasurable trance, and continued in it longer than before. For many minutes after the experiment, I experienced the thrilling in the extremities, the exhilaration continued nearly two hours. For a much longer time I experienced the mild enjoyment before described connected with indolence; no depression or feebleness followed. I ate my dinner with great appetite and found myself lively and disposed to action immediately after. I passed the evening in executing experiments. At night I found myself unusually cheerful and active; and the hours between eleven and two, were spent in copying the foregoing detail from the common-place book and in arranging the experiments. In bed I enjoyed profound repose. When I awoke in the morning, it was with consciousness of pleasurable existence, and this consciousness more or less, continued through the day.
Since December, I have very often breathed nitrous oxide. My susceptibility to its power is rather increased than diminished. I find six quarts a full dose, and I am rarely able to respire it in any quantity for more than two minutes and half.
The mode of its operation is somewhat altered. It is indeed very different at different times.
I am scarcely ever excited into violent muscular action, the emotions are generally much less intense and sublime than in the former experiments, and not often connected with thrilling in the extremities.
When troubled with indigestion, I have been two or three times unpleasantly affected after the excitement of the gas. Cardialgia, eructations and unpleasant fulness of the head were produced.
I have often felt very great pleasure when breathing it alone, in darkness and silence, occupied only by ideal existence. In two or three instances when I have breathed it amidst noise, the sense of hearing has been painfully affected even by moderate intensity of sound. The light of the sun has sometimes been disagreeably dazzling. I have once or twice felt an uneasy sense of tension in the cheeks and transient pains in the teeth.
Whenever I have breathed the gas after excitement from moral or physical causes, the delight has been often intense and sublime.
On May 5th, at night, after walking for an hour amidst the scenery of the Avon, at this period rendered exquisitely beautiful by bright moonshine; my mind being in a state of agreeable feeling, I respired six quarts of newly prepared nitrous oxide.
The thrilling was very rapidly produced. The objects around me were perfectly distinct, and the light of the candle not as usual dazzling. The pleasurable sensation was at first local and perceived in the lips and about the cheeks. It gradually however, diffused itself over the whole body, and in the middle of the experiment was for a moment so intense and pure as to absorb existence. At this moment, and not before, I lost consciousness; it was however, quickly restored, and I endeavoured to make a by-stander acquainted with the pleasure I experienced by laughing and stamping. I had no vivid ideas. The thrilling and the pleasurable feeling continued for many minutes; I felt two hours afterwards, a slight recurrence of them, in the intermediate state between sleeping and waking; and I had during the whole of the night, vivid and agreeable dreams. I awoke in the morning with the feeling of restless energy, or that desire of action connected with no definite object, which I had often experienced in the course of experiments in 1799.