On 12 Sep 2008, at 17:09, Barry Job wrote:
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> Although I am sure that the practice goes back a lot earlier.
> Barry Job.
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Apologies if this is not relevant to this thread! The well documented
tragic accident in the Snaefell Lead Mine, I.O.M., 1897, witnessed the
use of mice to indicate the presence of gases present in the mine
following the deaths of 20 mines following an underground fire.
The accident almost certainly led to the shortening of the life of the
Inspector of Mines for north Wales and the I.O.M, Clement Le Neve
Foster, after he took charge of recovering some of the bodies from the
mine.
J.S. Haldane and Le Neve Foster subsequently published a book 'The
Investigation of Mine Air' in which they report that whilst a miner's
lamp 'will give him warning of the presence in air of any other
dangerous impurity except CO; (called 'carbonic oxide' by the authors)
and in the view of the difficulty of recognising by ordinary means the
presence in poisonous amount of this gas, the author proposed the plan
of making use of a small warm-blooded animal (a mouse or very small
bird) as an indicator of CO.'
The authors go on to describe the use of such an animal, including
killing the poor creature and using a chemical test to determine the
level of saturation of its haemoglobin.
Peter Challis
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