Scientific Researches! New Discoveries in Pneumaticks! [sic] or an Experimental Lecture on the Powers of Air

Gillray's humor could be quite bawdy, but this image may record an actual event at the recently founded Royal Institution. Professor Thomas Young reportedly conducted such an experiment on a fellow member of the society, Sir John Coxe Hippsley, who was said to have inhaled a gas as Young held his nose to explosive ends.