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"You were perfectly right about the asphyxiation, Doctor," he remarked slowly, "but wrong as to the cause. It wasn't carbon monoxide or illuminating-gas. And you, Mr. Whitney, were right about the poison, too. Only it is a poison neither of you ever heard of." "What is it?" we asked simultaneously. "Let me take these samples and make some further tests. I am sure of it, but it is new to me.
The chief poison gases used during the war owed their discovery, as individuals, to pre-war research which was not stimulated by the need for an offensive chemical. Phosgene was discovered in 1811 by J. Davy, while experimenting on the action of sunlight on a mixture of carbon monoxide and chlorine.
More than ever up in the air over the mystery, I could only watch Kennedy and MacLeod, each following his own lines. It might, perhaps, have been ten minutes after MacLeod returned, and during that time he had never taken his eyes off the bird, when I began to feel a little drowsy. A word from MacLeod roused me. "There's carbon monoxide in the air, Kennedy!" he exclaimed.
We can end it, but we cannot start it. The rigidly scientific type of mind sees no greater mystery in the difference in contour of different animal bodies than a mere difference in the density of the germ cells: "one density results in a sequence of cell-densities to form a horse; another a dog; another a cat"; and avers that if we "repeat the same complex conditions, the same results are as inevitable as the sequences of forces that result in the formation of hydrogen monoxide from hydrogen and oxygen."
The hot carbon monoxide passing over the hot magnetic oxide quickly reduces it down to metallic iron, which, being in a spongy condition, acts more freely on the steam during later makes than it did at first, and being infusible at the temperature employed, may be used for a practically unlimited period. What more simple method than this could be desired?
The outer zone of a luminous flame is not the zone of complete combustion; it is a zone in which luminosity is destroyed in exactly the same way that it is destroyed in the Bunsen burner; that is the air penetrating the flame so dilutes and cools down the outer layer of incandescent gas that it is rendered non-luminous, while some of the gas sinks below the point at which it is capable of burning, with the result that considerable quantities of the products of incomplete combustion carbon monoxide and acetylene escape into the air, and render it actively injurious.
With carbureted water gas and 20 per cent. of carbon monoxide we are still below the limit of danger, but a pure water gas with over 40 per cent. of the same insidious element of danger will never be tolerated in our households. Already a patent has been taken by Messrs.
Quickly Kennedy drew off a little of the blood of the cat and held it up to the light along with the human samples. The difference was apparent. "You see," he explained, "carbon monoxide combines firmly with the blood, destroying the red colouring matter of the red corpuscles. No, Doctor, I'm afraid it wasn't carbonic oxide that killed the lovers, although it certainly killed the cat."
Gas is subject to fluctuations in quality, sometimes becoming quite dangerous in its effect upon the atmosphere. Water gas, which is very generally manufactured, is said to carry four or five times as much carbon monoxide per unit of bulk as retort gas.
The other constituents of coal-gas methane, carbon monoxide, olefines, etc. are not affected by passing through boiling sulphur, and for ordinary laboratory work their removal is quite unnecessary, as they do not in any way interfere with the precipitation of metallic sulphides.
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