Oh Excellent Air Bag.
Adam Green, Editor.
PDR Press. 2016. 139 pp.
ISBN 978-1-911292012.
In furtherance of his study of nitrous oxide, Davy invited his scientific colleagues and his literary friends to inhale the gas and to report to him their impressions. But before doing so, Davy—said to have been of an audacious temperament—indulged in abundant self-experimentation of his own. Nitrous oxide, he recorded in his notes, induced pleasurable sensations, acute perceptions, and "sublime emotions." Indeed, on one occasion, under its influence, Davy seemed to be visited by a profound insight into the nature of reality, prompting him to exclaim to a companion: "Nothing exists but thoughts! The universe is composed of impressions, ideas, pleasures and pains!"
Those who acted as experimental subjects for Davy in his nitrous oxide investigations tended afterward to concur with him in his enthusiastic endorsement of the gas. One of the most effusive in his praise of the mysterious new substance was Davy's good friend, the poet Robert Southey, who wrote of the experience, "It makes one so strong & so happy! So gloriously happy! & without any after debility but instead of it increased strength & activity of mind & body—oh excellent air bag. I am sure the air in heaven must be this wonder working gas of delight." Another subject of the experiment reported that under the influence of the gas "my mind was elevated to a most sublime height," while other subjects noted vivid ideation together with feelings of "joyousness," "extreme pleasure," "delight," "ecstasy," and "a great propensity to laugh" (this latter effect giving rise to the popular name of "laughing gas").
Not every subject of the experiment, however, found the intoxication delectable. Some considered the experience disagreeable or deemed the gas to have been without any appreciable effect. The consensus, though, was the order of altered consciousness precipitated by nitrous oxide, though beyond the scope of language to convey, was a "celestial enjoyment," an enhancement not only of the senses but of the mind as well, in some instances bringing about a profound but elusive species of philosophical or mystical insight.
In addition to these absorbing early reports on the nature of the experience, Oh, Excellent Air Bag contains a very useful historical-cultural introduction by scholar-author Mike Jay, and a selection of rare and unusual writings regarding this curious substance. Jay traces the erratic path of nitrous oxide from the laboratory to the theater, where public lectures on and demonstrations of the effects of the gas were held, thence to the fairground and carnival circuits of England and the United States where—administered to volunteers from the audience—it was featured as an exotic entertainment, and then to the dental and medical professions, where it was employed as an anesthetic. Jay observes that despite the trivialization of nitrous oxide as an amusing popular spectacle and the utilitarian character of its practical applications, "its mysterious effects on consciousness lingered in the public imagination," particularly among those of a philosophical or metaphysical bent.
Among the other texts selected by the editor, Adam Green, for inclusion in the volume are two satires from the early 1800s directed against the "gaseous revelations" reputedly uttered by nitrous oxide devotees, and a lively eye-witness description of one of the itinerant "Laughing Gas Shows" popular on both sides of the Atlantic—this one taking place in the city of Philadelphia in 1814. There are further first-person accounts written by those who have undertaken the inward journey brought on by nitrous oxide, together with thoughtful reflections upon the philosophical implications of a phenomenon in which consciousness seems to exist "in a dimension beyond the physical body."
Though nearly forgotten today, Paul Benjamin Blood's writing exerted a vital and enduring influence on the thinking of William James, aiding his mystical side and likely inspiring James to undertake his own experiments. Pieces by both are included here. Blood's, excerpted from his pamphlet The Anaesthetic Revelation & the Gist of Philosophy, states he bases his inferences upon 14 years of experience with nitrous oxide, both his own experiences and those of others. The arguments he sets forth are dense with allusions and can at times be difficult to follow. In brief, Blood suggests the state of consciousness called forth under the influence of nitrous oxide may perhaps more accurately be considered as an "uncondition" rather than a "condition," by which I understand him to mean he views the nitrous oxide state as a deliverance from ordinary socially-culturally-linguistically constrained cognition. Blood seems to advance the notion that existence is a pluralistic phenomenon—a pluriverse, complex, equivocal, incongruous—transcending all reductive, rational categories.
For William James, inhalation of nitrous occasioned "ecstasies of cognitive emotion," and a "tremendously exciting sense of an intense metaphysical illumination." He ruefully noted that the insights conceived or received under the influence of the gas tended to fade immediately after the effect of the substance waned. This unhappy circumstance notwithstanding, James succeeded in bringing back with him from his sojourns in an alternate realm of consciousness notions sufficient to be going on with. Among other enhancements to his thinking, James declared nitrous oxide had "made me understand better than ever before the strength and the weakness of Hegel's philosophy." To which he added, "I strongly urge others to repeat the experience." Of such significance to James were his nitrous oxide experiences, he penned two essays in which he described them and weighed their implications for philosophy, and again referred to them in his classic study, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902).
Rescued from oblivion by the editor is the text of a haunting, hallucinated one-act play by Theodore Dreiser. Laughing Gas is set in a hospital operating room and follows the events of an operation, both the actions and verbal exchanges of the surgeon and his assistants and the interior experiences of a patient anesthetized by nitrous oxide. In spite of an auspicious sounding cast including an entity named Demyaphon (the personification of nitrous oxide), "Shadows and Voices of the first, second, third and fourth planes," and even a speaking part for "the Rhythm of the Universe," ultimately the tenor of the play is—in common with the rest of Dreiser's output—rather bleak. But Laughing Gas does share with many other writings on nitrous oxide the premise that it displaces our accustomed frame of reference and grants admission, however temporary, to a deeper structure of the universe.
A fitting way to end the collection is the anonymously authored comic/cosmic article punningly entitled "The Chair of Metaphysics," which in 1920 appeared in the pages of The Atlantic Magazine. The author recounts his visit as a young man to his dentist during which he experienced a journey into the cosmos: "I drifted out among star-ways, and a galaxy of saffron constellations whirled about my head." He is pleased to discover when his session in the chair is over that the aged dentist listens sympathetically to his patient's account of his inward adventures and is willing to discuss with him metaphysical issues. Similarly, a dentist whom the author subsequently frequents is found by him to be accomplished in "metaphysical rationalism" and conversant with "the central problems of consciousness." With the advent of local anaesthetics, however, such intellectual pleasures, the author laments, have been superseded by mere technical efficiency, with the regrettable attendant effect that dentists have been reduced to mere skilled technicians, no longer philosophically minded. "Well, others may elect bare science and they will," he writes, "but as for me, give me philosophy every time."
I would very much like to have seen R.H. Ward's account of his remarkable nitrous oxide experience, appearing in his book A Drug Taker's Notes (London, 1957) included among the selections here, but either the editor was unaware of Ward's account or may have excluded it because Ward's memoir is not yet out of copyright. (The PDR Press is an extension of the Public Domain Review "dedicated to the exploration of curious and compelling works... now fallen into the public domain.") In any case, this is a minor compliant, given what this collection accomplishes. The origin and development of nitrous oxide as a cultural phenomenon is well-documented and greatly advanced here both by the introduction and the selections (for original research alone the book should stand as a contribution to cultural history), and the topic is, I think, one that is worthy of the careful consideration given to it by this volume.
In the spirit of William James, we should in forming our views of consciousness and existence take account of the whole range of human experience. Nitrous oxide intoxication implicitly raises questions about the nature of reality and of the self. On the testimony of several gifted minds, as presented in this collection, it can extend the domains of our sensibility, alter our angle of inward vision, and open an aperture permitting a glimpse of other orders of consciousness, other conditions of being.
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