A cartoon featured in an 1807 dissertation by a medical student at the University of Pennsylvania on the “chemical and exhilarating effects of nitrous oxide gas”. Around the two figures, presumably Davy to the right and perhaps Beddoes to the left, a number of Davy’s quotes describing his experiences appear.
Featured on PDR in the essay “O, Excellent Air Bag”: Humphry Davy and Nitrous Oxide
The summer of 1799 saw a new fad take hold in one remarkable circle of British society: the inhalation of "Laughing Gas". The overseer and pioneer of these experiments was a young Humphry Davy, future President of the Royal Society. Mike Jay explores how Davy's extreme and near-fatal regime of self-experimentation with the gas not only marked a new era in the history of science but a turn toward the philosophical and literary romanticism of the century to come.
Also appearing in the essay…
The Effects of Breathing Nitrous Oxide
Date
1807
From
Bulletin of the Society of Medical History of Chicago
