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Updated: September 21, 2025
Can it be admitted that, under the influence of excessive heat and of constant humidity, the black crusts of the granitic rocks are capable of acting upon the ambient air, and producing miasmata with a triple basis of carbon, azote, and hydrogen? This I doubt.
My idea is that the common air inspired enters into the venous blood entire, in a state of dissolution, carrying with it its subtle or ethereal part, which in ordinary cases of chemical change is given off; that it expels from the blood carbonic acid gas and azote; and that in the course of the circulation its ethereal part and its ponderable part undergo changes which belong to laws that cannot be considered as chemical the ethereal part probably producing animal heat and other effects, and the ponderable part contributing to form carbonic acid and other products.
Strychnia, brucia, ignatia, calabarin, woovarin, atropin, digitalin, and many others, including all whose effect is most tremendous upon the human system, are in this group. Not without insight did the early discoverers call nitrogen azote, "the foe to life."
His imagery is frequently daring, leaping from the concrete to the abstract, from the special to the general and universal, and vice versa, with a bound that is like a flight. Here are a few specimens of his pleasing audacities: "There is plenty of wild azote and carbon unappropriated, but it is naught till we have made it up into loaves and soup."
On this point I will tell you the history of his original name, azote, which you will find curious enough.
The putrefaction of animal and other azotised bodies is a chemical process, by which they are gradually dissipated in a gaseous form, chiefly in that of carbonic acid and ammonia; now to convert the carbon of the animal substance into carbonic acid requires oxygen, and to convert the azote into ammonia requires hydrogen, which are the elements of water.
When a country has been long subjected to cultivation, it is not the proportions between the azote and oxygen that vary. The constituent bases of the atmosphere remain unaltered; but it no longer contains, in a state of suspension, those binary and ternary mixtures of carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen, which a virgin soil exhales, and which are regarded as a source of fecundity.
The intensity is the same in dry air, and in air mingled with vapours; but it is feebler in carbonic acid gas than in mixtures of azote and oxygen. From these facts, which are all we know with any certainty, it is difficult to explain a phenomenon observed near every cascade in Europe, and which, long before our arrival in the village of Atures, had struck the missionary and the Indians.
Priestley, had stated the fatal effects on animal life, of the gazeous oxide of azote; Mr. Davy, on the contrary, for reasons which satisfied himself, thought it respirable in its pure state; at least, that a single inspiration of this gas might neither destroy, nor materially injure the powers of life. He tried one inspiration. No particularly injurious effects followed.
This is a consideration not to be passed over lightly; assuredly the gluten of the center contains as much azote as the gluten of the circumference, but it must not be admitted in a general way that the alimentary power of a body is in connection with the amount of azote it contains, and without entering into considerations which would carry us too wide of the subject, we shall simply state that if the flesh of young animals, as, for instance, the calf, has a debilitating action, while the developed flesh of full-grown animals of a heifer, for example has really nourishing properties, although the flesh of each animal contains the same quantity of azote, we must conclude that the proportion of elements is not everything, and that the azotic or nitrogenous elements are more nourishing in proportion as they are more developed.
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