Medical treatment, 1880s

Globe, Wednesday 6th October 1886.
Gas suffocation.
The recent fatal quarry and colliery incidents have brought to the fore certain local remedies for suffocation by gases. One popular remedy in particular has been much ridiculed, and stoutly defended. The treatment recommended is that of placing the body of the patient face downwards on a steep incline to facilitate the escape of the heavy poisonous gases; and this method is coupled in many mining districts with the application of newly turned up earth or of water.

These remedies have been handed down among miners from generation to generation; but their scientific value is not very apparent. In the case of a colliery explosion, suffocation is produced by carbonic acid. Of the gases produced by an explosion of blasting powder, about 55 per cent. is carbonic acid, 25 per cent. nitrogen, and 15 per cent. carbonic oxide - a particularly poisonous gas.

Now, part of this popular treatment depends upon the fact that a heavy gas, such as carbonic acid, can be poured out downwards - a fact which, in the first place, would not affect those lighter gases, carbonic oxide and nitrogen. Then, however efficatious this method may be in the case of carbonic acid, it does not meet the difficulty that this fatal gas has already largely entered the lungs. No amount of downward tilting can counteract the effects of the gas which has thus been inhaled: they can only be neutralised by a free supply of oxygen. It is probable, therefore, that the miners' superstition is only in this way valuable.

Agitation of the body serves, as in the case of a drowned person, to stimulate the action of the lungs, and induce them to inhale oxygen. The further addition of newly-turned earth or water is probably only useful as a means of refreshing and reviving the drooping system. This is not the only case in which a valuable remedy is found in general use, coupled with a complete misconception of the manner in which it operated.