This building formed part of the Pnuematic Institute. It contained a maze of laboratories and opened out into a garden at the back. A separate building in this garden was used for the manufacture of gases and the storage of chemical compounds. It also had a large tradesman’s entrance through which medical supplies could be easily delivered. Sir Humphry Davy, when working with Beddoes, lived here. It was also here where the famous experiments with gas took place.
Robert Southey was the first to try Davy’s nitrous oxide. He records the effects as follows: an involuntary laugh accompanied by ‘a sensation perfectly new and delightful’ in his finger tips and toes. Later, Southey wrote to his brother Tom: ‘such a gas Davy has discovered, the gaseous oxyd [...] Davy has actually invented a new pleasure for which language has no name [...] it makes one strong and happy! O! Excellent air-bag!’.
Of the effects of the gas, Coleridge reported to Davy that it resembled ‘that which I remember once to have experienced after returning from the snow into a warm room’.
Davy recorded the poem ‘On Breathing Nitrous Oxide’ in his notebook, 1799:
Not in the ideal dreams of wild desire
Have I beheld a rapture wakening form
My bosom burns with no unhallowed fire
Yet is my cheek with rosy blushes warm
Yet are my eyes with sparkling lustre filled
Yet is my mouth implete with murmuring sound
Yet are my limbs with inward transports thrill'd
And clad with new born mightiness round
