Page:The American Cyclopædia (1879) Volume IV.djvu/514

 502 CHLORODYNE CHLOROFORM p b their formation. This hydrate was employed by Faraday in his celebrated experiment of liquefying chlorine gas. Chlorine water is gradually decomposed in the light, oxygen gas being liberated, and hydrochloric acid formed. Schonbein has shown that spongy ruthenium will also liberate oxygen from chlorine water, the same as the sunlight. Chlorine decomposes steam; hence the hydrochloric acid fumes which issue from the crater of Mt. Vesuvius. It will also expel oxygen from many metallic bases at high temperatures. The bleaching roperties of chlorine were early investigated y Berthollet, Mackintosh, and Tennant, and through their recommendation many thousand acres of land were restored to agricultural uses which had previously been devoted to bleach- eries. (See BLEACHING POWDERS.) Chlorine is a most efficient agent in decomposing putrid and noxious vapors and gases, and it is largely employed as a disinfectant. In combination it is employed in medicine as a stimulant and an- tiseptic, also as a gargle in scarlatina, putrid sore throat, and in smallpox. When inhaled, it in- stantly produces great irritation in the trachea, which may prove fatal. The vapor of ether and alcohol affords some relief. The compound of chlorine with nitrogen is a thin yellow oil, somewhat resembling nitroglycerine, excessive- ly explosive, especially in contact with grease or oil. Chlorine unites with oxygen in vari- ous proportions to form anhydrides and acids. The acids are hypochlorous, chlorous, chloric, and perchloric. The salts of hypochlorous acid, called hypochlorites, possess bleaching proper- ties. The salts of chloric acid are called chlo- rates, and are used in medicine and the arts. The most important is the potassium chlorate. The compound of chlorine with hydrogen, called hydrochloric acid, hydrogen chloride, and muriatic acid, is one of the most important chemical products known in the arts. (See HYDBOCHLOBIO AOID.) CHLORODYNE, a name given to several secret preparations, the most important ingredients of which are chloroform, morphia, cannabis in- dica, capsicum, and hydrocyanic acid. Danger- ous and even fatal results have followed its use, as might indeed be supposed from the ac- tivity of the substances which enter into its composition, and the uncertainty of its doses. CHLOROFORM (synonymes, trichlormethane, dichlorinated methyl chloride, and perchloride of formyl), a transparent, colorless oily liquid, discovered in 1831 by Samuel Guthrie of Sack- ett's Harbor, N. Y., and described by him as " a spirituous solution of chloric ether." Lie- big, in a note to an article on chloral, published in Poggendorff 's Annalen for November, 1831, also mentions this compound under the name of chloride of carbon, and gives the method of its preparation. Soubeiran also discovered it independently of either of the above named chemists; and although his article appeared in the Annales de physique et de chimie for Octo- ber, 1831, that number of the journal was not printed until the commencement of the year 1832, owing to the disturbed state of affairs in France at that time, and it is evident that he was not acquainted with the properties of "bichloric ether," as he calls it, so early as Oc- tober, 1831. The priority of discovery in Europe is undoubtedly due to Liebig, and the confusion has arisen from the antedating of the journal in which Soubeiran's article first appeared. There is no question, however, that Guthrie was the first person to prepare chloroform, and to him the honor of its discovery is manifestly due. It has been asserted that from the time of the discovery of chloroform by Guthrie until its application as an anaesthetic vapor, it re- mained a mere chemical curiosity. This is not correct. In 1831 Dr. Eli Ives, professor of the theory and practice of medicine in the medical institution of Yale college, employed chloro- form in a case of difficult respiration, adminis- tering it actually by inhalation of its vapor ; he afterward published the facts in the " Ameri- can Journal of Science " for January, 1832. Later Dr. Nathan B. Ives employed it in asth- ma, and in other cases, reporting upon it favor- ably. The exact formula of chloroform was determined in 1835 by Dumas, who gave it its present name. It was at first regarded as formic anhydride, in which the whole of the oxygen is displaced by its equivalent amount of chlorine, and hence the name given to it by Dumas. It is now looked upon as methylic ether, in which two atoms of hydrogen are re- placed by two atoms of chlorine, and its for- mula is CHC1. Dr. Simpson's original pa- per on chloroform was communicated to the medico-chirurgical society of Edinburgh, Nov. 10, 1847, and he states that Mr. Waldie first made known the liquid to him. The medical profession having been prepared by the success of etherization to receive any new anaesthetic, whenever properly verified, at once accepted chloroform, coming as it did from such high authority as that of the late Dr. Simpson, and the news of its revived application spread rapidly over the globe. Dr. Simpson at once communicated the results of his experiments to Dr. Charles T. Jackson of Boston, who suc- cessfully repeated the trials of its anesthetic properties, Dec. 30, 1847, upon Charles A. Joy, at that time a pupil in his laboratory (now pro- fessor of chemistry in Columbia college, New York). The introduction of chloroform into the medical practice of the United States dates from this time, although Dr. Ives had strongly recommended it many years before. It would have been difficult to purchase an ounce of chloroform in the United States in 1847; at the present time (1873) the annual consump- tion in this country cannot fall much short of 100,000 Ibs. Chloroform can be obtained by the action of hypochlorite of lime (bleaching powders) upon numerous organic substances, such as wine alcohol, wood alcohol, acetone, salts of the acetates, volatile oils, acetic acid, tartaric acid, formic acid, oxalic acid, and other