< b>Mask, oxygen: A mask that covers the mouth and nose, and is hooked up
to an oxygen tank. It delivers oxygen directly to the patient. Oxygen can also be
delivered directly through a nasal catheter, a tube that divides into two smaller
tubes that go into the nostrils.
Oxygen is a colorless, odorless and tasteless gas that makes up about 20 percent
of the air we breathe (and at least half the weight of the entire solid crust of
the earth) and which combines with most of the other elements to form oxides. Oxygen
is essential to human, animal and plant life.
The chemical symbol for the element oxygen is O. As a medicinal gas, oxygen contains
not less than 99.0% by volume of O2.
Oxygen was discovered in 1774 by the British scientist Joseph Priestly but he
did not name it "oxygen." He called it dephlogisticated air. (Priestly discovered
three other chemical compounds, one of which, nitrous oxide - "laughing gas" - is
still used today as a mild anesthetic agent, as during dental procedures.)
The word "oxygen" came from the French "oxygene." It was so named by the French
scientist Antoine Lavoisier (1743-94) who thought it was a necessary ingredient
in all acids. This is not so. Hydrochloric acid (HCl), for example, contains no
oxygen.
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