A Breathing Apparatus.

Thames Star, Volume XXIX, Issue 8612, 17 March 1897, Page 2

A Breathing Apparatus.

IMPORTANT TO FIREMEN AND MINERS.

A highly ingenious apparatus, called " pneumatophor,"for enabling miners, firemen, and others to breathe when surrounded by after-damp, smoke (from fires on board ship or ashore), or other noxious fumes, has been invented by Chevalier de w alcherUysdal and Dr. Gartner, Professor at the University. It was patented before the publication of lJr. Haldane's "Report on the Causes of Death in Colliery Explosions and Underground Fires," to which reference has already been made, but it is exactly on the same lines. It consists of an air-tight indiarubber bag containing first a steel bottle holding 60 litres of pure oxygen at a pressure of 100 atmospheres, and secondly a glass bottle (protected by a metal one) containing 425 cubic centimetres of 25 per cent, solution of caustic soda. By means of a handscrew outside the bag the oxygen can be let into the bag at intervals as required for breathing, while the turning of another hand-screw breaks the glass bottle inside and allows the caustic soda to Hovr out and be absorbed by the network of knitted strips of dimity in the bag. Then there are an indiarubber breathing tube, with a mouth-piece and two noseclips (one a spare one). After strapping the apparatus on to his chest the user lets some oxygen into the bag, breaks the caustic soda bottle, takes the mouth-piece between his lips, and puts on a nose- clip so as to breathe only through his mouth. He inhales pure oxygen, while the soda absorbs the carbonic acid he exhales, and thus sets the oxygen free to be re-breathed. This makes it suffice for more than half an hour if he is moving, and about an hour and a half if at rest. In its satchel ready for use it weighs four and a half kilogrammes, and costs only a few pounds. Numerous tests recently carried out by the Vienna Fire Brigade and in the Silesian coal mines have proved its absolute efficiency.