PROCEEDINGS OF THE POLYTECHNIC ASSOCIATION. 517 



coal and shale, but those produced naturally and derived from 

 wells and springs, have lately come into a great, variety of uses. 

 They were certainly used as a medicine by the aborigines of our 

 country. The petroleum obtained from the springs at Cuba, in 

 this State, was so valuable in the eyes of the old Six Nations, 

 that in selling the western part of the State of New York, they 

 reserved those springs. At a very early day this oil was in use 

 among them for strains and for rheumatism, and it was known in 

 the druggist shops as lunar oil. 



By distilling it, and thus uniting the hydrogen and carbon in 

 various proportions, various medicines have been derived ; one of 

 them, similar in effect to quinine, is used extensively in England 

 as a cure for intermittent diseases. Quinine and morphine are 

 both h^^drocarbons. Why one should be a tonic and the other 

 a narcotic, we do not know. An anaesthetic preparation from 

 coal oil has been used with some success, but not with so great 

 success as sulphuric ether or chloroform. Any hydrocarbon is a 

 valuable remedy for rheumatism. I venture to say that no per- 

 son ever sulBFered much from rheumatism whose skin was always 

 in a well oiled condition. Oil of turpentine, petroleum, para- 

 phine or any oil will be useful as a cure. Petroleum comes 

 from the earth, in the United States, in a great variety of forms ; 

 sometimes so hard that it is like pitch ; sometimes so loaded down 

 with paraphine as to be useful immediately for lubricating the 

 machinery of locomotives ; sometimes it is of a light amber color, 

 and is nearly all light oil or kerosene, burning in common lamps 

 without any purification, or losing only five per cent, if purified; 

 and there are coal oils of almost every grade between these 

 extremes. Of the hundreds of springs now in operation in the 

 United Stattjs, no two produce oil of exactl}^ the same kind, and 

 the oil also changes in the same spring after a few months. It 

 has also been found impossible to make an equable coal oil. It 

 can be obtained by distillation from coal for five cents per gallon ; 

 but some of it will lose twenty-five per cent, in the rectification, 

 and some of it will yield no light oil at all. At present we seem 

 to be supplying the world from our wells, but the springs may 

 be exhausted, as those of Burmah have been. Many are now 

 sealing up their springs, and may hereafter reap, the benefit of 

 so doing. But there is no certainty, if you have a well, that a 

 man on the next five acre lot may not tap it and run you dry. 

 Petroleum is not confined to the carboniferous formation, but 



