240 Prof. B. Silliman, Jr. on Chloroform. 
strument made by Chevalier for one of your committee, and sup- 
posed to be one of the best instruments of French make ever im- 
ported into this country. e superiority of Mr. Spencer’s mi- 
croscope over Chevalier’s number one, 7s very decided, although 
made on a much smaller and less expensive scale. 
J. F. Hotton, Committee. 
Joun L. Le Conte, 
Arr. XX VIII.—On Chloroform; by B. Smuman, Jr., A.M. 
Pustic attention has been much arrested for a few weeks 
past, by the application which has been made of Chloroform as 
a substitute for soil as a means of producing insensibility to 
pain in surgical case 
Prof. Simpson of Edinburgh i is said to have been the first who 
made known in this country, this new application of chloro- 
form; although we believe that the medical use of this agent 
internally, was first recommended by Professor Silliman in his 
Elements of Chemistry, vol. ii, p. 20, 1830. Some account 0 
chloroform and its preparation, may not be uninteresting at the 
present time. 
It will he remembered that this substance has been long known 
to chemists, under the name of “oil of the Dutch chemists,” and 
“Dutch oi il” from its discovery in 1796, by an association of 
Dutch chemists at Harlaem, who discovered also at the same 
time, Lvl Sa hydrogen. gas, which they named olefiant gas, 
ts producing this oily com pound when mingled with its own 
vontuits of chlorine. The terms chloric ether, bichloric ether, 
perchlorid of formyle, Dutch oil, and oil of the Dutch chemists, 
are all synonyms of chloroform, a term first proposed by Dumas, 
signifying, as he suggested, the relation of this substance to formic 
acid, or its hypothetical radical fo e. 
The production of “ chloric ether” so called, by the action of 
alcohol with bleaching powders, was discovered almost simulta- 
neously and without conference by our ingenious coe 
Samuel Guthrie, of Sackett’s Harbor, New York,* a E. 
Soubeirant in France. In both cases alcohol was distilled from 
a solution of bleaching powders in water, but in varying propor- 
tions. For the particulars of their processes, the reader is refer- 
red to the volumes quoted below. The medicinal article known 
Se See this Journal, i ser., xxi, 64, xxii, 105, January, 1832 
Annales nnales de Chim. e t de Phys, ipod , 1831, asta son in this a ol i Bt 
