Prussic-acid Sentence Examples

The free acid, which is obtained by treating the salts with acids, is an oily liquid smelling like prussic acid; it is very explosive, and the vapour is poisonous to about the same degree as that of prussic acid.

The first three will he treated here; for the others see Prussic Acid and Cyanamide.

About the same time he showed by a wonderful series of experiments that the colouring matter of Prussian blue could not be produced without the presence Of a substance of the nature of an acid, to which the name of prussic acid was ultimately given; and he described the composition, properties and compounds of this body, and even ascertained its smell and taste, quite unaware of its poisonous character.

With these exceptions, the simple cyanides are readily decomposed even by carbonic acid, free prussic acid being liberated.

It is by no means the most powerful poison known, for such an alkaloid as pseud-aconitine, which is lethal in dose of about 1/200 of a grain, is some hundreds of times more toxic, but prussic acid is by far the most rapid poison known, a single inhalation of it producing absolutely instantaneous death.

But his last great piece of pure research was on prussic acid.

In a note published in 18 r.1 he described the physical properties of this acid, but he said nothing about its chemical composition till 1815, when he described cyanogen as a compound radicle, prussic acid as a compound of that radicle with hydrogen alone, and the prussiates (cyanides) as compounds of the radicle with, metals.

The proof that prussic acid contains hydrogen but no oxygen was a most important support to the hydrogen-acid theory, and completed the downfall of Lavoisier's oxygen theory;, while the isolation of cyanogen was of equal importance for the subsequent era of compound radicles in organic chemistry.

For the cyanides see Prussic Acid.

The formation of prussic acid at a certain period of the vital processes of certain plants may be given as an example of such phases; and poisons akin to muscarin seem to arise frequently in development or regression, both in animals and plants.