A man who had bought the secret of making fulminating silver, had prepared as much as resulted from the solution of one ounce and a half. Apparently, in a great measure, unaware of the nature of the preparation, he had placed it, unmixed with any thing, on an earthen plate, which stood on a table; his wife and children being around, he sat down to distribute the powder upon several papers which he had prepared for the purpose; sand and shot are mixed with the powder in the papers for the purpose of giving momentum, and of producing attrition when the torpedo is thrown, in order to ensure its explosion. Probably also the sand, looking not very unlike the powder, may be intended to screen it from view, and thus to preserve the secret, should the papers be opened. The unhappy man no sooner touched the fulminating silver with a knife, than it exploded with its usual violence; the table was split in two; blood issued copiously from every part of his face, not from wounds, for it does not appear that the fragments hit him, but, according to the opinion of a competent judge, the blood was actually forced through the pores of the skin by the power of the explosion, which very nearly destroyed his eyes. He suffered immensely, but now, at the end of eight months, sees partially with one eye, but the other is nearly, if not quite, destroyed.
Should not the tampering with such dangerous substances by ignorant people be prevented by law?
In a late lecture in the laboratory of Yale College, some fulminating silver, on the point of a knife, was in the act of being put upon a copper-plate connected with one pole of a galvanic battery in active operation, the other pole was not touched by the experimenter; but it seems that the influence which was communicated through the floor of the room was sufficient instantly to explode the powder, as soon as the knife touched the copper-plate; the knifeblade was broken in two, and one half of it thrown to a distance among the audience.
Recently also, we are informed, in one of the foreign journals, that a man in England, who accidentally trod on a quantity of fulminating silver, had his foot nearly destroyed by the explosion.
USEFUL ARTS.
Art. XIX. Account of an economical method of obtaining Gelatine from bones, as practised in Paris.
Art. XIX. Account of an economical method of obtaining Gelatine from bones, as practised in Paris. Communicated to the Editor by Mr. Isaac Doolittle.