Wednesday 6 August 2014 at 18:53
The summer of 1799 saw a new fad take hold in one remarkable circle of British society: the inhalation of "Laughing Gas". The overseer and pioneer of these experiments was a young Humphry Davy, future President of the Royal Society. Mike Jay explores how Davy's extreme and near-fatal regime of self-experimentation with the gas not only marked a new era in the history of science but a turn toward the philosophical and literary romanticism of the century to come.
Source: http://publicdomainreview.org/2014/08/06/o-excellent-air-bag-humphry-davy-and-nitrous-oxide/