May 6th, 1800.
Mr. Joseph Priestley from breathing nitrous oxide, generally had unpleasant fulness of the head and throbbing of the arteries, which prevented him from continuing the respiration.
Dr. Beddoes mentioned in his Notice, that Mr. Josiah Wedgwood and Mr. Thomas Wedgwood experienced rather unpleasant feelings from the gas. Mr. Josiah Wedgwood has since repeated the trial, the effects were powerful, but not in the slighted degree pleasant.
Mr. R. Boulton and Mr. G. Watt have been much less affected than any individuals.
Many other persons have respired the gas, but as their accounts contain nothing unnoticed in the details, it is useless to particularise them.
The cases of all the males who have been unpleasantly affected since we have learnt to prepare the gas with accuracy, are related in this Section and in the last [Division]. Those who have been pleasurably affected after a fair trial and whose cases are not noticed, generally experienced fulness in the head, heat in the chest, pleasurable thrillings, and consequent exhilaration.
To persons who have been unaccustomed to breathe through a tube, we have usually given common air till they have learnt to respire with accuracy: and in cases where the form of the mouth has prevented the lips from being accurately closed on the breathing tube, by the advice of Mr. Watt, we have used a tin plate conical mouth-piece fixed to the cheeks, and accurately adapted to the lips; by means of which precautions, all our later trials have been perfectly conclusive.
II. Of the effects of Nitrous Oxide upon persons
inclined to hysterical and nervous affections.
The case of Miss—— N. and other cases, detailed by Dr. Beddoes in his Notice, seemed to prove that the action of nitrous oxide was capable of producing hysterical and nervous affections in delicate and irritable constitutions.