Note 165 — RESEARCH II.

The different persons who have respired nitrous oxide have, as will be seen hereafter, given different accounts of the taste; the greater number have called it sweet, some metallic. One of my friends, in a letter to me dated Nov. 13, 1799, containing a detail of some experiments made on the respiration of nitrous oxide, at Birmingham, denotes the taste of it by the term “sweetish faintly acidulous.” To me the taste both of the gas and of its solution in water, has always appeared faintly sweetish.