Kankakee Valley Post, Volume 3, Number 3, DeMotte, Jasper County, 1 June 1933 — MAY BE ANTIDOTE FOR DEADLY GAS [ARTICLE]

MAY BE ANTIDOTE FOR DEADLY GAS

A San Francisco man who attempted suicide by the inhalation of carbon monoxide gas from the exhaust of his automobile in a closed garage and was for half an hour “out of this life,” as the doctors solemnly asserted, was almost literally snatched from the grave by injections of methylene blue, administered by his physician in an experimental test of the efficacy of that chemical. It had been conjectured by chemists that methylepe blue might be an antidote for poisonous gas, though its common use is for coloring fabrics. The idea of employing a synthetic dyestuff as a medical agent was scoffed at by some physicians, but in the San Francisco case it worked out, and the effect produced is regarded as somethiiig of a scientific wonder. Carbon monoxide gas poison is produced by burning carbon-contain-ing fuels in a chamber in which there is a deficiency of air. It exerts its extremely dangerous action on the body by displacing its oxygen content, thus removing it from its combination with haemoglobin, which forms the solid coloring of red blood corpuscles, and destroying bodily tissue. Formerly the treatment of monoxide poisoning was by artificial respiration, the administration of pure oxygen and the stimulation of circulation. But. in cases where a person has been under the influence of the gas for as much as thirty minutes’ treatment of the latter kind usually has been of no avail.--Los Angeles Times.