“I fill three quarters of immensity! ” Satires of Early Nitrous Oxide Research

Abstract

Abstract In early 1799 the twenty-year-old scientist Humphry D avy published a brief letter announcing his discovery that nitrous oxide gas could safely be respired by humans; a full account of this research appeared in the summer of 1800. 1,2 During this period Davy worked in Clifton, just outside the English seaport of Bristol, under the tutelage of Thomas Beddoes, a physician who for many years had researched the possible therapeutic uses of gas inhalation. In a ddition to patients who appeared at Beddoes’ clinic and research facility, the Pneumatic Institution, Davy and his mentor were joined in their research by more than forty healthy individuals, including S amuel Taylor Coleridge, Robert Southey, Peter Mark Roget, Thomas Poole, J ames Mackintosh, Anna Laetitia Barbauld and James Watt. 3 This work by Beddoes and Davy was quickly replicated elsewhere in England and within a few years in the United States. 4