WEBVTT - Selects: How Nitrous Oxide Works 0:00:00.840 --> 0:00:04.040 Good morning or good afternoon everyone, Happy Saturday. It's Chuck here. 0:00:04.200 --> 0:00:09.520 Stuff you should know. It is February and Saturday Select time, 0:00:09.520 --> 0:00:11.559 because we are going back to that day to talk 0:00:11.600 --> 0:00:14.920 about how nitrous oxide works. And honestly, the reason I 0:00:14.960 --> 0:00:17.239 picked this as this select is that I don't even 0:00:17.280 --> 0:00:20.159 remember doing this one, so I'm gonna listen again, and 0:00:20.200 --> 0:00:28.320 so should you. Welcome to Stuff you Should Know, a 0:00:28.400 --> 0:00:39.519 production of I Heart Radio. Wa Hey, and welcome to 0:00:39.560 --> 0:00:44.000 the podcast. I'm Josh Clark Wal There's Charles W Chuck 0:00:44.040 --> 0:00:47.519 frant Wall, and there's Jerry And this is stuff you 0:00:47.520 --> 0:00:53.000 should Wall Wall Wall Wall, good podcast you're making. I'm 0:00:53.040 --> 0:00:56.480 giggling like a schoolgirl. You're making a I think I 0:00:56.560 --> 0:00:59.840 just topped you schoolgirl. One echo e reverbi uh sal. 0:01:00.240 --> 0:01:03.560 So this could only be about one thing, nitrous ox 0:01:03.600 --> 0:01:06.960 side and that's right and two oh, that's right. Hippie Crack, 0:01:07.160 --> 0:01:14.000 the Bitter Mistress, Whippets, jazz juice, Yeah why not? I 0:01:14.040 --> 0:01:17.319 mean those are the street names that has medical applicats. 0:01:17.600 --> 0:01:19.400 Some of those are made up. Yeah, we're going to 0:01:19.520 --> 0:01:23.199 cover the whole gamut here. Yeah, medical use and recreational 0:01:23.319 --> 0:01:27.440 use dangers. Yeah, we're gonna do an episode on nitrous oxide. 0:01:27.480 --> 0:01:31.840 That's right. Um, so, Chuck, we should probably start not 0:01:31.959 --> 0:01:34.640 at the beginning, but not at the end, somewhere in 0:01:34.680 --> 0:01:37.560 the middle, because the history of nitrous ox side is 0:01:37.640 --> 0:01:41.600 extraordinarily interesting, just the history. Yeah, we're gonna tell it 0:01:41.600 --> 0:01:45.680 out of order like pulp fiction. That's right. See if 0:01:45.680 --> 0:01:52.000 you can recognize characters from other movies like Vincent Vegas Brother, Yeah, 0:01:52.040 --> 0:01:55.480 Michael Madison was Vincent Vegas Brother. Did you know that? Yeah? Oh, 0:01:55.520 --> 0:01:58.480 you knew that. I did. Well, well, I don't think 0:01:58.560 --> 0:02:01.840 that's not it's heavily as secret. Did you notice that 0:02:01.960 --> 0:02:04.480 red Apple cigarettes make an appearance in more than just 0:02:04.520 --> 0:02:06.960 pulp ficture? Yeah, all right, I'm done. Did you notice 0:02:06.960 --> 0:02:10.040 that Quentin Tarantino likes to write two hundred and seventy 0:02:10.040 --> 0:02:14.280 five page scripts. Yeah, but that's nothing compared to the 0:02:14.360 --> 0:02:19.280 five hundred and eighty page tomb that Humphrey Davy wrote 0:02:19.280 --> 0:02:22.000 on nitros oxide. Very nice little segue. All right, So 0:02:22.040 --> 0:02:23.920 we're not even talking about Humphrey Davy yet. He's at 0:02:23.919 --> 0:02:25.680 the beginning. He's not even at the beginning, but he's 0:02:25.720 --> 0:02:28.119 towards the beginning. We're gonna talk instead about the sad 0:02:28.240 --> 0:02:33.040 saga of one Dr Horace Wells d D S very sad. Yeah. 0:02:33.200 --> 0:02:37.160 So Dr Horace Wells was a dentist in new Haven, Connecticut. 0:02:37.160 --> 0:02:41.320 I believe in the eighteen forties. What is dds is 0:02:41.360 --> 0:02:44.760 that Dennis Dennis see is That's what that means. That's 0:02:44.760 --> 0:02:47.440 what I've always assumed it was. And at this point 0:02:47.520 --> 0:02:49.440 everyone knows we just make most of the stuff. We 0:02:49.480 --> 0:02:52.520 stay up. That's right. Uh so you're right, sir. He 0:02:52.560 --> 0:02:55.280 was a dentist in Hotford, Connecticut. It was Hartford, I said, 0:02:55.320 --> 0:02:58.960 new Haven. Uh, what's the difference, as long as it's 0:02:59.000 --> 0:03:02.000 in Connecticut. Uh. And this was in the eighteen thirties 0:03:02.520 --> 0:03:07.520 and U oh man really yeah, maybe we should start over. 0:03:08.680 --> 0:03:12.359 Wow wow wow, all right. Uh. He was a dentist 0:03:12.360 --> 0:03:14.760 in the eighteen thirties, and he recognized something that all 0:03:14.840 --> 0:03:18.480 dentists of the day recognized, which is everyone hates your 0:03:18.480 --> 0:03:23.360 guts because you are causing excruciating amounts of pain on 0:03:23.400 --> 0:03:25.800 a daily basis to your patients. Yeah. It's it's like, 0:03:26.360 --> 0:03:29.959 here's some whiskey, Maybe bite on this broomstick. Well, actually 0:03:29.960 --> 0:03:32.639 you can't do that because you're doing dynastry. You can't 0:03:32.639 --> 0:03:34.520 even do that. Yeah, you ever heard the term? It's 0:03:34.520 --> 0:03:37.400 like pulling teeth. That's where it comes from, right, And 0:03:37.400 --> 0:03:42.520 and so Horace Wells dds dentist dentists. See. Uh. He 0:03:42.920 --> 0:03:45.840 felt pretty bad about this enough so that, um, he 0:03:46.160 --> 0:03:49.440 went to a traveling exhibition once that came through town. 0:03:49.840 --> 0:03:52.200 And this was in the eighteen forties, and it was 0:03:52.240 --> 0:03:56.000 staged by a man named h. A. Gardner Colton. That's 0:03:56.000 --> 0:03:58.680 a great name, Gardner Quincy Colton. Yeah he sounds like 0:03:58.720 --> 0:04:01.880 a like a rich kid from Texas or yeah, or 0:04:01.920 --> 0:04:04.960 like a side show showman, which is what he was, right. 0:04:05.240 --> 0:04:08.080 And he actually was in medical school for a little while. 0:04:08.120 --> 0:04:10.520 And while he was in med school he was introduced 0:04:10.600 --> 0:04:14.360 to the wonders of huffing nitrous oxide. Yes, and he said, 0:04:15.240 --> 0:04:17.440 I'm not gonna do medical school anymore. Ims is gonna 0:04:17.520 --> 0:04:19.960 drop out and hit the road with tank the old 0:04:20.040 --> 0:04:23.720 hippie crack. Yeah exactly, and show people what's what. And 0:04:23.760 --> 0:04:26.880 so at one of these demonstrations in Hartford and sometime 0:04:26.920 --> 0:04:31.360 in the eighteen forties, um, he saw Colton give this 0:04:31.400 --> 0:04:34.560 demo and and I guess right afterwards saw a man 0:04:34.680 --> 0:04:37.640 run into the stage or fell off the stage and 0:04:38.200 --> 0:04:41.359 hurt his leg and Wells went over. I was like, 0:04:41.360 --> 0:04:42.919 are you okay? And the guys like, what are you 0:04:42.960 --> 0:04:45.400 talking about? And he said the bonus sticking out of 0:04:45.400 --> 0:04:48.440 your legs, sir, And he's like, what's the bone? Now? 0:04:48.560 --> 0:04:52.640 It wasn't that bad, but he did say interesting. Um, 0:04:52.720 --> 0:04:55.600 here's what I'll do. I'll get Colton to come into 0:04:55.680 --> 0:04:59.560 my office tomorrow and my buddy colleague John Riggs. I'll 0:04:59.560 --> 0:05:02.920 get Cold to administer the gas and I'll get Rigs 0:05:02.920 --> 0:05:06.479 to pull one of my teeth. And uh he did so, 0:05:07.040 --> 0:05:09.000 and he said I did not feel so much as 0:05:09.080 --> 0:05:11.040 the prick of a pin. And he said, I think 0:05:11.040 --> 0:05:15.039 we're onto something here, something called pain free dentistry a 0:05:15.160 --> 0:05:17.960 k A. Please stop hating me, right, And so Wells 0:05:18.080 --> 0:05:22.560 followed in this really great tradition that really stopped in 0:05:22.839 --> 0:05:25.200 I guess probably about the twentieth century, mid the late 0:05:25.200 --> 0:05:28.360 twentieth century, of where if you were a scientist you 0:05:28.520 --> 0:05:31.440 were your own first human test subject. That people still 0:05:31.480 --> 0:05:35.720 do that. Yeah, apparently in um in Marvel Comics they do. 0:05:35.960 --> 0:05:38.480 One of the greatest articles I've ever read in any 0:05:38.560 --> 0:05:42.520 magazine anywhere in all time throughout the universe, in perpetuity 0:05:42.800 --> 0:05:45.880 is called blood spore, and it was about the murder 0:05:45.920 --> 0:05:51.720 of a mycologist scientists who studies mushrooms, and um, it's 0:05:51.920 --> 0:05:55.320 really really interesting. There's all sorts of weird like cold 0:05:55.360 --> 0:05:57.880 case stuff to it, but there's also like an under 0:05:58.120 --> 0:06:01.120 underlying thread where if you're my oologists and you discover 0:06:01.200 --> 0:06:04.680 a mushroom, you try it out on yourself, right, Like 0:06:04.760 --> 0:06:07.160 that's just what they do still today. I think that 0:06:07.360 --> 0:06:09.080 you tried it on yourself after you fed it to 0:06:09.120 --> 0:06:12.719 your children, just to see what happened, maybe your dog first, 0:06:12.800 --> 0:06:15.080 and then you try it on you. Man. I'll bet 0:06:15.080 --> 0:06:18.880 those those my collogist dogs were bandanas then are super 0:06:18.960 --> 0:06:22.599 laid back. You know. Uh, what's the name of the article? 0:06:22.640 --> 0:06:24.680 I want to check that out, blood Sport. It's in 0:06:24.760 --> 0:06:28.159 Harper's which means it's behind a paywall, but gotcha, it's 0:06:28.360 --> 0:06:30.920 It's almost worth a year's subscription just for that one. 0:06:31.560 --> 0:06:35.279 And Harper's archives are definitely full of good articles. Agreed. 0:06:35.880 --> 0:06:38.880 So Wells was pretty happy because he knew he was 0:06:38.920 --> 0:06:43.919 onto something there, and he said he performed um, just 0:06:44.040 --> 0:06:47.479 dental procedures for the next few weeks and months on 0:06:47.680 --> 0:06:50.680 dozens of patients and they were all like this is great, great, 0:06:50.760 --> 0:06:52.400 didn't feel a thing, Doc, And he said, I think 0:06:52.400 --> 0:06:55.520 I'm ready. I wanna present this to some Harvard medical 0:06:55.760 --> 0:06:59.760 students in the establishment. And he got on stage and 0:07:00.160 --> 0:07:02.800 uh he went to pull a tooth and the guy 0:07:02.839 --> 0:07:06.400 started screaming. Yeah. So, like after all of these tests, 0:07:07.040 --> 0:07:09.640 successful tests, when he finally gets up the gumpch and 0:07:09.720 --> 0:07:13.880 to give a successful demonstration, it goes as bad as 0:07:13.880 --> 0:07:16.840 it could. And it's actually called the Humbug affair because 0:07:17.000 --> 0:07:20.880 the medical students shouted humbug and what was the other 0:07:21.480 --> 0:07:24.720 swindler at him, and he's like, no, I'm not, I'm not. 0:07:24.880 --> 0:07:27.000 I swear this is for real, I really care about 0:07:27.040 --> 0:07:29.280 my patients. In the room started spinning and he fell 0:07:29.360 --> 0:07:31.720 over and when he came to, he was on skid row, 0:07:31.880 --> 0:07:35.600 hooked on chloroform and nitrous oxide. Yeah. He later went 0:07:35.600 --> 0:07:37.760 on to say that, um, although wait, let me let 0:07:37.760 --> 0:07:41.920 me clarify, you technically can't get hooked on nitrous oxide. 0:07:41.920 --> 0:07:45.960 But he was huffing a lot of nitrous oxide, right. Uh. Well, 0:07:46.000 --> 0:07:49.360 although Davy, well we'll get to that a spoiler. He 0:07:49.360 --> 0:07:51.200 went on to say that he thought that he had 0:07:51.240 --> 0:07:56.640 probably withdrawn too much too soon from the guy, because 0:07:56.680 --> 0:07:58.480 as we'll go on to talk about here in a 0:07:58.520 --> 0:08:02.000 little bit, um, when you stop breathing in nitris, you 0:08:02.040 --> 0:08:04.640 go back to normal pretty quickly quickly. So he kind 0:08:04.640 --> 0:08:06.440 of just aired. I don't know, I would have gone 0:08:06.440 --> 0:08:09.000 a little bit overboard for the demo. Sure, on the 0:08:09.040 --> 0:08:11.080 same side, I would have been like ninety night pal. 0:08:11.680 --> 0:08:16.160 But um, yeah, he he became well, like you said, 0:08:16.200 --> 0:08:19.320 not hooked, but a heavy user of ether and chloroform 0:08:21.800 --> 0:08:25.000 in the On his thirty third birthday, he was I 0:08:25.000 --> 0:08:28.280 think awaiting arrival of his He ended up living alone, 0:08:28.360 --> 0:08:31.040 moved and was waiting on his wife and kid to 0:08:31.080 --> 0:08:33.560 come to London. But by this time he'd sunk into 0:08:33.600 --> 0:08:37.760 like a terrible depression, right and uh he was alone 0:08:37.880 --> 0:08:40.080 because his family wasn't able to join him yet. And 0:08:40.200 --> 0:08:43.040 he flipped out on his thirty third birthday and went 0:08:43.040 --> 0:08:44.839 out on the street and through acid on these two 0:08:44.840 --> 0:08:48.640 women flipped out after going on like a chloroform vendor. Yeah, 0:08:48.800 --> 0:08:52.559 and went to prison, and in prison he sort of 0:08:52.600 --> 0:08:55.679 reached He kept doing chloroform and ether in prison because 0:08:55.679 --> 0:08:59.440 I guess you could get it, and um hit rock 0:08:59.480 --> 0:09:04.400 bottom and under an ether binge slashed his femoral artery 0:09:04.640 --> 0:09:07.440 in his thigh died. Well, yeah, he talked to the 0:09:07.480 --> 0:09:11.559 guard into escorting him home to get his shaving kit. 0:09:12.120 --> 0:09:14.280 And at home it's like I need a big razor. 0:09:14.440 --> 0:09:16.680 I think at home or maybe back if he's getting 0:09:16.760 --> 0:09:19.320 chloroform in prison, it could have been there. He huffed 0:09:19.320 --> 0:09:22.480 a dose of chloroform to anesthetize himself and then he 0:09:22.520 --> 0:09:25.960 cut his femoral artery. So to the end, he was 0:09:25.960 --> 0:09:31.720 a believer in anesthesia, I guess. So. However, um years later, 0:09:32.240 --> 0:09:35.520 in eighteen sixty four, he was He was recognized by 0:09:35.559 --> 0:09:39.080 the A d A, the American Dental Association as a 0:09:39.120 --> 0:09:44.040 pioneer of using uh not ether But what are we 0:09:44.040 --> 0:09:47.600 talking about two in dentistry in two oh yeah, And 0:09:47.640 --> 0:09:51.800 do you know who got him to that point? Well, yeah, 0:09:52.120 --> 0:09:55.600 Gardner Colton. That's right. He set up practice as a 0:09:55.679 --> 0:09:59.480 dentist after all, and it was his successful demonstrations that 0:09:59.520 --> 0:10:02.240 got the d A on board. So now we need 0:10:02.280 --> 0:10:04.719 to go back in time. Yeah, even further back. That's 0:10:04.720 --> 0:10:07.920 sort of the middle. So we're in the way back machine. 0:10:10.679 --> 0:10:12.600 I guess we didn't point out we were in there already. 0:10:12.800 --> 0:10:15.600 I think everyone just assumed, and we go back seventy 0:10:15.679 --> 0:10:20.480 years previous to Horace Wells, to a guy named Jason 0:10:20.520 --> 0:10:26.640 Priestley Dylan, Sorry, no, Brandon, Joseph Priestly. Oh that guy 0:10:26.880 --> 0:10:30.920 Jason Priestley's dad, Yeah, or great great great great great 0:10:30.920 --> 0:10:33.680 great great grandfather. I don't think there was any relation. Actually, 0:10:33.720 --> 0:10:39.040 you don't know, you're right, Joseph Priestley. He was an 0:10:39.040 --> 0:10:43.920 Englishman and he begins Priestley, that's right. And he was 0:10:43.960 --> 0:10:47.760 a big He was an enlightened thinker, and he was 0:10:47.840 --> 0:10:51.040 a contemporary Ben Franklin. And he was a smart guy 0:10:51.160 --> 0:10:54.880 on a lot of different subjects. He was a polyglot. Yeah, 0:10:54.880 --> 0:10:57.320 that's a good word for it. Cool guy. And no, 0:10:57.440 --> 0:11:00.200 I'm sorry. He was a poly math math a holly 0:11:00.240 --> 0:11:02.720 glodd as somebody speaks a bunch of different languages. Poly 0:11:02.800 --> 0:11:07.480 Math is somebody who's in a bunch of different fields. Yeah. Probably. 0:11:07.920 --> 0:11:10.160 He was an enlightenment guy for sure. And in the 0:11:10.200 --> 0:11:13.040 seventeen seventies he was studying a love I think we 0:11:13.080 --> 0:11:16.600 should go back to using only old terminology because what 0:11:16.640 --> 0:11:20.079 they called gases back then was the study of the airs, 0:11:20.840 --> 0:11:24.920 which is great, totally makes sense. Gases. It needs to 0:11:24.960 --> 0:11:29.280 shoot a duck and he actually lived next to a brewery, 0:11:29.880 --> 0:11:32.160 so he had a lot of access to CEO two 0:11:32.600 --> 0:11:36.840 and very smartly created a device called the pneumatic trough 0:11:37.600 --> 0:11:40.440 to isolate gases, collect and isolate these gases, and he 0:11:40.480 --> 0:11:42.400 was good at it so well. A guy named Steven 0:11:42.440 --> 0:11:46.520 Hales actually created the first pneumatic trough, which is actually 0:11:46.600 --> 0:11:49.760 pretty simple invention. It's neat though, so like you have 0:11:49.840 --> 0:11:52.200 a tube. Let's say you have a fire and you 0:11:52.200 --> 0:11:55.000 want to collect carbon monoxide from it. You basically have 0:11:55.080 --> 0:11:58.040 a tube that collects it the smoke that's coming off 0:11:58.080 --> 0:12:01.520 of it, and the tube goes into a vat of 0:12:01.559 --> 0:12:06.760 water and up into a like a glass bell jar 0:12:07.160 --> 0:12:09.840 that's upside down. It's inverted so that there's there's air 0:12:09.880 --> 0:12:12.600 at the top. I think the principle is similar. And 0:12:12.840 --> 0:12:15.440 so the smoke goes into the water and then goes 0:12:15.559 --> 0:12:18.559 up and is filtered through the water. And what the 0:12:18.600 --> 0:12:20.760 gas you have on the other end is whatever you're 0:12:20.800 --> 0:12:23.160 looking for, or a bunch of different gases that you 0:12:23.200 --> 0:12:26.720 can study and pure form simplistically beautiful. It is so 0:12:26.840 --> 0:12:30.360 um priestly had his own that he made the pneumatic trough, 0:12:30.640 --> 0:12:36.079 and this guy actually isolated eight different gases or airs 0:12:36.160 --> 0:12:39.160 for the first time, which apparently is a record. Still. Yeah, 0:12:39.240 --> 0:12:41.280 I don't know what the record is like most gases 0:12:41.320 --> 0:12:45.640 discovered in a single lifetime. Okay, I guess all right, 0:12:46.760 --> 0:12:49.080 that's good it is. I don't know that there's any 0:12:49.120 --> 0:12:52.959 more gases to discover. I wonder, and who studies that 0:12:53.040 --> 0:12:54.959 kind of thing? What do you call somebody who studies 0:12:55.000 --> 0:13:00.559 gases an arologists, anist? Well, if you do that right 0:13:00.600 --> 0:13:02.560 into us, because I want to know all about that, 0:13:02.640 --> 0:13:04.680 and if there's if you guys think there's any gases 0:13:04.720 --> 0:13:08.800 left to be discovered here on earth. Agreed. Alright, let's 0:13:08.840 --> 0:13:11.720 take a break before we talk about Humphrey Davy because 0:13:11.760 --> 0:13:32.400 he's This is where the story gets really good. That 0:13:32.520 --> 0:13:35.360 was quite a break. Yeah, I can't believe you broke 0:13:35.440 --> 0:13:41.640 that lamp. That was upset, all right, Humphrey Davy. Uh. 0:13:42.400 --> 0:13:45.439 He worked at a place called the Newmatic Institute, and 0:13:45.760 --> 0:13:51.440 they used gases as for therapy, curative therapies, and he 0:13:52.400 --> 0:13:54.760 got into using them on himself, which, like you said, 0:13:54.800 --> 0:13:56.559 was sort of the thing to do at the time, 0:13:56.640 --> 0:13:59.720 you experiment on yourself. Right. Plus, as the author of 0:13:59.760 --> 0:14:03.000 this Rolling Stone article from nineteen seventy five that I 0:14:03.080 --> 0:14:06.120 read pointed out he was also like twenty at the time, 0:14:06.520 --> 0:14:09.040 so it totally makes sense that he would like half 0:14:09.080 --> 0:14:13.160 a bunch of nitrous oxide and then the call it science, right, 0:14:13.280 --> 0:14:15.600 but he I mean, it really was science. So this 0:14:15.679 --> 0:14:19.960 guy apparently had tried it a few times before, but 0:14:20.040 --> 0:14:22.960 then his big experiment, his first huge experiment was on 0:14:23.080 --> 0:14:27.880 Boxing Day of seventeen, right, which is December. It's very 0:14:27.880 --> 0:14:33.280 important that you remember December. Why is it important, Well, 0:14:33.320 --> 0:14:38.240 it was Boxing Day, but it was also literally box 0:14:38.400 --> 0:14:42.320 day because Humphrey David got into a box and had 0:14:42.400 --> 0:14:45.760 some guy pump in was it like twenty courts? Yeah, 0:14:45.840 --> 0:14:48.200 he's he stepped into a seal box and he requested 0:14:49.640 --> 0:14:53.000 a physician, like a real doctor, to release twenty courts 0:14:53.160 --> 0:14:57.720 because otherwise it'd just be crazy, right. He released twenty 0:14:57.760 --> 0:15:00.640 courts of nitrous oxide every five minute as long as 0:15:00.640 --> 0:15:05.040 I'm conscious. That must have been the safe words. I'm 0:15:05.040 --> 0:15:07.920 passed out. And he went for an hour and fifteen 0:15:07.960 --> 0:15:11.160 minutes like that in this box, and then he stepped 0:15:11.160 --> 0:15:15.600 out and apparently grabbed some oil skins or also called 0:15:15.600 --> 0:15:20.160 gas bags, and um huffed another twenty courts right afterward. 0:15:20.880 --> 0:15:24.000 And they're like, how are you still standing? And he goes, 0:15:24.040 --> 0:15:27.680 I'm not I'm flying. He basically did. He had a 0:15:27.760 --> 0:15:31.040 great disposition to laugh, which eventually is where laughing gas 0:15:31.080 --> 0:15:35.400 would come from. He talked about shining packets of light 0:15:35.480 --> 0:15:39.800 and energy. He talked about objects dazzling in their intensity, 0:15:39.880 --> 0:15:43.720 and sounds amplified into a cacophony that echoed through infinite 0:15:43.760 --> 0:15:48.240 space and losing all connection to external things. It's pretty cool. 0:15:48.280 --> 0:15:50.640 So we there's this really great article on the public 0:15:50.680 --> 0:15:54.960 Domain Review and it's called oh excellent, gas bag, gas 0:15:55.000 --> 0:15:58.160 bag or airbag, airbag, air bag, I'm sorry, which is 0:15:58.200 --> 0:16:01.440 a quote from a poet that was friends with Humphrey Davy, 0:16:01.480 --> 0:16:04.960 who became the Poet Laureate of Great Britain. Later on 0:16:05.480 --> 0:16:09.720 Um and the the Um, the author really does a 0:16:09.760 --> 0:16:13.040 good job of describing what nitrous oxide does to you, 0:16:13.360 --> 0:16:20.560 almost suspiciously good. So um. They say that the first 0:16:20.560 --> 0:16:23.560 signature was it's curiously benign sweet taste, followed by a 0:16:23.600 --> 0:16:26.200 general pressure in the head as he continued to inhale. 0:16:26.480 --> 0:16:30.080 Within thirty seconds, the sensation of soft, probing pressure had 0:16:30.080 --> 0:16:32.440 extended to his chest and the tips of his fingers 0:16:32.440 --> 0:16:35.120 and toes. This was accompanied by a vibrant burst of 0:16:35.120 --> 0:16:37.760 pleasure and a gradual change in the world around him. 0:16:38.000 --> 0:16:40.720 Objects became brighter and clearer, and the space in the 0:16:40.760 --> 0:16:44.239 cramped box seemed to expand and take on unfamiliar dimensions. 0:16:44.760 --> 0:16:47.440 Now under the influence of the largest dose of nitrous 0:16:47.480 --> 0:16:50.840 oxide anyone had ever taken, these effects were intensified to 0:16:50.920 --> 0:16:56.160 levels he could not have imagined. So I keep going, sure, 0:16:56.320 --> 0:16:57.680 do you want to do? You want to take over? 0:16:58.280 --> 0:16:59.760 I think it's better when we break it up. I'm 0:16:59.760 --> 0:17:04.520 gonna the southy part. So okay. His hearing became fantastically acute, 0:17:04.600 --> 0:17:07.320 allowing him to distinguish every sound in the room, and 0:17:07.320 --> 0:17:11.200 seemingly from far beyond, a vast, distant hump wah wah 0:17:11.400 --> 0:17:15.119 wah wah, perhaps the vibration of the universe itself. In 0:17:15.160 --> 0:17:17.439 his field of vision, the objects around him were teasing 0:17:17.480 --> 0:17:20.760 themselves apart into shining packets of light and energy. He 0:17:20.840 --> 0:17:23.600 was rising effortlessly in a new world whose existence he 0:17:23.640 --> 0:17:27.760 had never suspected. Somehow, the whole experience was irresistibly funny. 0:17:28.240 --> 0:17:31.960 So Robert Southey, his buddy you mentioned the future poet laureate. 0:17:32.359 --> 0:17:34.560 He brought him in afterward, He was like, I gotta 0:17:34.800 --> 0:17:37.880 get some more people in on this fantastic I gotta 0:17:37.920 --> 0:17:39.720 share this. Yeah, that's what you do. So he brought 0:17:39.760 --> 0:17:43.920 in Southey, got him high, and he wrote his brother 0:17:44.040 --> 0:17:49.879 Tom a letter that said, oh Tom, exclamation point, such 0:17:49.920 --> 0:17:54.879 a gas as Davy discovered the gaseous oxid. Oh Tom again, 0:17:55.240 --> 0:17:58.080 exclamation point, I have had some. It made me laugh 0:17:58.119 --> 0:18:01.040 and single and every toe and fingertip. Davy has actually 0:18:01.040 --> 0:18:04.120 invented a new pleasure for which language has no name. 0:18:04.359 --> 0:18:08.280 Oh Tom, I am going for more this evening. It 0:18:08.359 --> 0:18:11.879 makes one strong and so happy, so gloriously happy. Oh 0:18:12.000 --> 0:18:16.680 excellent air bag exclamation Boyit pretty great stuff, No wonder 0:18:16.760 --> 0:18:21.640 he was so in the summer of after they closed 0:18:21.680 --> 0:18:25.080 the shop down the Pneumatic Institution. During the day he 0:18:25.119 --> 0:18:29.520 would invite surgeons and playwrights and poets and chemists and 0:18:30.080 --> 0:18:32.560 anyone who was interested who we could get the word 0:18:32.600 --> 0:18:36.080 to to come in there and huff nitrius um. I 0:18:36.080 --> 0:18:38.119 was about to see under the guise of experimentation, but 0:18:38.119 --> 0:18:41.000 it really was because he would he learned that he 0:18:41.119 --> 0:18:44.360 was really finding that there were It was a language 0:18:44.400 --> 0:18:47.239 experiment because no one could accurately describe what they were 0:18:47.240 --> 0:18:52.119 feeling with English words right exactly. They He found that 0:18:52.320 --> 0:18:56.200 very strange and insignificant that people would just come out 0:18:56.240 --> 0:18:59.719 and just couldn't put it into into words. Their experience 0:19:00.000 --> 0:19:01.680 it was, I mean, it was a brand new sensation 0:19:01.720 --> 0:19:04.360 there was. Um. One guy, James Thompson said, we must 0:19:04.359 --> 0:19:07.360 either invent new terms to express these new and peculiar 0:19:07.359 --> 0:19:10.639 sensations or attach new ideas to old ones before we 0:19:10.680 --> 0:19:15.040 can communicate intelligently or I'm sorry, intelligibly with each other 0:19:15.119 --> 0:19:18.760 on the operation of this extraordinary gas. I think um 0:19:18.840 --> 0:19:23.320 Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the great poet, um put it best. 0:19:23.600 --> 0:19:26.200 He put it really succinctly. He basically said that it 0:19:26.280 --> 0:19:31.480 was like coming in from the snow into a warm room. Yeah. 0:19:31.520 --> 0:19:33.920 So what happened was he did these experiments with these people. 0:19:33.960 --> 0:19:37.000 They eventually got kind of tired of it. He experimented 0:19:37.080 --> 0:19:39.119 on himself, like not even in the room. He just 0:19:39.160 --> 0:19:41.560 would fill up a big balloon or not a balloon 0:19:41.600 --> 0:19:46.400 but a silk bag and just walk around England huffing. 0:19:47.280 --> 0:19:53.159 And he found himself getting psychologically hooked at least because 0:19:53.200 --> 0:19:55.960 he said, he confessed that the desire to breathe the 0:19:55.960 --> 0:19:58.720 gas is awakened in me by the sight of a 0:19:58.760 --> 0:20:01.840 person breathing. So he would just see someone walking and 0:20:01.920 --> 0:20:04.560 breathing and think, oh man, I wish I had some gas. 0:20:04.680 --> 0:20:07.439 That's how they call it, hippie crack. Yeah, exactly. So 0:20:07.520 --> 0:20:10.119 everyone else fell away. He was only experimenting with themselves 0:20:10.119 --> 0:20:12.199 for a little while. Then he brings in Coleridge and 0:20:12.200 --> 0:20:15.560 they really buddied up, and um he I think they 0:20:15.560 --> 0:20:18.600 were just kind of saw eye to eye on the gas, 0:20:19.400 --> 0:20:22.000 like neither one of them wanted to cease using it. 0:20:22.160 --> 0:20:24.960 And so again, though you have to point out all 0:20:25.000 --> 0:20:27.800 this time, while he's under the he's just huffing nitrous 0:20:27.840 --> 0:20:32.399 basically constantly. Humphrey Davy is still remaining a man of science. Right, 0:20:32.800 --> 0:20:38.040 So remember December was the day that the Boxing Day 0:20:38.119 --> 0:20:42.720 experiment took place, right by Easter. Just a few months later, 0:20:42.960 --> 0:20:46.480 he'd written a five hundred and eighty page scientific treatise 0:20:46.960 --> 0:20:51.400 on nitrous oxide and its effects on humans and animals. 0:20:52.119 --> 0:20:56.359 Should I read the title, Yeah, Researches chemical and philosophical 0:20:56.680 --> 0:21:00.960 chiefly concerning nitrous oxide or deep Oh man, what is 0:21:01.000 --> 0:21:06.159 that word? Deflogisticated nitrous air and its respiration was the 0:21:06.240 --> 0:21:09.560 name of it? Yes, So in that book he he 0:21:09.680 --> 0:21:13.199 mentioned something, um kind of I guess off handedly. He 0:21:13.240 --> 0:21:16.800 says that as nitrous oxide appears capable of destroying physical pain, 0:21:17.119 --> 0:21:20.439 it may probably be used with advantage during surgical operations 0:21:20.440 --> 0:21:22.959 in which no great effusion of blood takes place. Yes, 0:21:23.040 --> 0:21:26.280 so not like open heart surgery, but maybe if you're 0:21:26.280 --> 0:21:30.560 going to set someone's broken arm. Right, So he says this, 0:21:30.880 --> 0:21:36.720 But it's another forty years before Horace Wells starts trying 0:21:36.720 --> 0:21:39.840 to use nitrous oxide as an anesthetic. Up to that point, 0:21:40.200 --> 0:21:44.159 it's basically just a high society drug that people have 0:21:44.280 --> 0:21:48.399 like nitrous parties with. That was the fate of nitrous 0:21:48.400 --> 0:21:51.679 oxide from eighteen hundred to about the eighteen forties. And 0:21:51.720 --> 0:21:54.639 then Horace Wells picks it up and it becomes brought 0:21:54.680 --> 0:21:57.879 into the medical field. Yeah, they finally start using it 0:21:57.920 --> 0:22:00.159 for its intended Uh, well, what would end up being 0:22:00.200 --> 0:22:05.320 its intended purpose? That's still used today and uh. In fact, 0:22:05.760 --> 0:22:09.919 nitrous oxide is the number one inhaled anesthetic in the 0:22:09.960 --> 0:22:13.439 medical profession. Asked for it by name. And here's the 0:22:13.480 --> 0:22:16.080 deal though, when you get it in the at the dentist, 0:22:16.800 --> 0:22:19.480 they can actually vary it, but it never goes more 0:22:19.520 --> 0:22:22.159 than a seventy thirty mix. I saw that too. This 0:22:22.240 --> 0:22:24.840 article says it's always a fifty fifty mix. That's not right. 0:22:24.960 --> 0:22:29.600 So it's it's um no more than nitrous yeah, which 0:22:29.640 --> 0:22:31.840 is very much key, as you'll learn, because one of 0:22:31.840 --> 0:22:36.320 the big dangers of doing it recreationally is not mixing 0:22:36.359 --> 0:22:39.359 it with oxygen. If you mix it with oxygen, like, 0:22:40.040 --> 0:22:44.600 you're fine, You're totally fine. Um. So it's kind of 0:22:44.680 --> 0:22:49.440 nuts chuck that with nitrous oxide. We spent at least 0:22:49.440 --> 0:22:52.000 a hundred and fifty years and still the day we're 0:22:52.040 --> 0:22:55.200 not a million percent sure, but at least a hundred 0:22:55.200 --> 0:22:59.960 and fifty years using it medically without understanding how it worked. Yeah, 0:23:00.040 --> 0:23:01.800 it's like you said, though, it's still a little dicey. 0:23:02.000 --> 0:23:04.120 It is a little bit dice you know. It makes 0:23:04.119 --> 0:23:06.919 you feel good, right, It does the trick, and it 0:23:07.000 --> 0:23:09.960 kicks in your your dopamine and all the pleasure receptors. 0:23:10.000 --> 0:23:13.120 So it's it's classified as three things. It's an analgesic, 0:23:13.240 --> 0:23:16.040 which means that it kills pain. It's a it's an anesthetic, 0:23:16.080 --> 0:23:19.560 but it's actually not a true anesthetic. And uh, it's 0:23:19.600 --> 0:23:25.080 an anxioltic, which means it diminishes anxiety. And so I 0:23:25.119 --> 0:23:29.760 found this two thousand six paper UM and it basically says, 0:23:29.920 --> 0:23:34.480 here's what we think is going on. So within anxiolytic 0:23:34.840 --> 0:23:38.480 um it triggers the same UM response in the brain 0:23:38.560 --> 0:23:42.520 as a benzodiazepin, which is like valium or annex or 0:23:42.560 --> 0:23:45.680 something like that. So it actually does cut down an anxiety, 0:23:45.760 --> 0:23:48.000 which is why they dentist will use it for like 0:23:48.119 --> 0:23:51.200 little kids or patients who are like nervous about going 0:23:51.200 --> 0:23:54.240 to the dentists. Get a little gas, probably not a 0:23:54.280 --> 0:23:57.160 seventy thirty concentration, just a little bit, and it will 0:23:57.200 --> 0:24:00.440