HOW WE POISON OURSELVES.

Daily Telegraph (Napier), Issue 3174, 31 August 1881, Page 4

HOW WE POISON OURSELVES.

Bernard, the great French toxicologist, made a series of experiments to illustrate, or rather to demonstrate, what had air will do for us and what we can do with it. Hi? object was not to prove that bad air wa; poison, but that it was a poison which we are able to take to a great and deleterioiv extent by gradual and continued doses. Ho proved it thus. He introduced a sparrow into a glass globe, all fche apertures of which were hermetically sealed. The sparrow seemed lively enough for an hour, hut then evidently suffered from the ill effects of breathing air that had already passed through its lungs. When a second hour had elapsed, Bernard introduced a second sparrow into the same globe. It seemed stunned, and in tbe lapse of a few minutes died. The original bird was left in for nn hour longer, when ifc drooped and fell. It was taken out apparently dead, but under the influence of fresh air and sunshine recovered. M. Bernard, in the interest? rather of science than of the sparrow, cruelly restored it to the globe, when almost instantly it tottered and died. The application of this to the human subject is obvious enough. We are, afc most; English meetings and places of amusement, in the position of that first sparrow. We start with a fair field, and no favor. The gas i only lit jusfc before tbe public are admitted ■ in the dining-room fche windows have beei open till the guests arrive. In both some thing like hermetical sealing takes plncr j and there is gradual asphyxiation. If h were sudden, people would die, as th< second sparrow died ; but, being gradual they get indurated like the first sparrow They pant and gasp, and say the heat i intolerable, but; they are able to stand it It is not until the next morning that tin headache asserts itself.—Fireside.