416 
ANAESTHETIC PROPERTIES OE BICHLORIDE OF CARBON. 
coffee so that when it is dry they cannot escape. If coffee is now to be made, cold 
water is to be poured over a certain quantity of the powder and made to boil. Ground 
coffee prepared in this way, and which lay exposed to the air for one month, yielded, on 
beino- boiled, as good a beverage as one made of freshly-roasted berries .—Popular Science 
Review ■ 
ON THE ANAESTHETIC AND SEDATIVE PROPERTIES OF BICHLORIDE 
OF CARBON, OR CHLOROCARBON. 
BY J. Y. SIMPSON, M.D., 
Professor of Medicine and Midwifery in the University of Edinburgh. 
At different times I have inhaled the vapours of various fluids besides sulphuric ether 
and chloroform, with the view of ascertaining their anaesthetic or other therapeutic 
effects. Several years ago I published some notes on the results obtained from breathing 
chloride of hydrocarbon, nitrate of ethyl, benzin, aldehyde, and bisulphuret of carbon. 
(See the ‘ Edinburgh Journal of Medical Science ’ for April, 1848.) All these five fluids 
give off angesthetic vapours, but in their manageableness and effects—and more especially 
fn their after-consequences—they appeared to me to be very inferior to either chloroform 
or sulphuric ether. The same remark applies to other vapours which I have since tried, 
as those of kerosolene, etc. * 
Lately I have inhaled and used a liquid the vapour of which seems to me to approach 
nearer in its quality and effects to chloroform than any other anaesthetic agent. The 
fluid I refer to is one of the chlorides of carbon. 
In describing the products of the action of chlorine on one of the anaesthetic fluids 
mentioned above, namely, chloride of hydrocarbon, or Dutch liquid, Mr. Fownes states 
(see his ‘ Manual of Chemistry/ seventh edition, p. 445) that three or four chlorides of 
carbon can be artificially made from Dutch liquid by the abstraction of successive por¬ 
tions of hydrogen and its replacement by equivalent quantities of chlorine. He enume¬ 
rates as belonging to this series—1, sesquichloride or perchloride of carbon (C 4 Cl<j) ; 2, 
protochloride of carbon (C 4 C1 4 ) ; 3, subchloride of carbon (C 4 C1 2 ) ; and 4, bichloride of 
carbon (C 0 C1 4 ). 
The last of these compounds—the bichloride of carbon—is the new anaesthetic which 
forms the special subject of the present observations. It was first, I believe, discovered 
by M. Regnault, in 1839. It has already received various appellations from various 
chemists, as perchloroformene, perchlorinated chloride of methyl, dichloride of carbon, 
carbonic chloride, tetrachloride of carbon, superchloride of carbon, perchloruretted hydro¬ 
chloric ether, and perchloruretted formene (see Gmelin’s ‘ Handbook of Chemistry/ vol. 
vii. p. 355, and Watts’s ‘ Dictionary of Chemistry/ vol. i. p. 765). 
If it becomes, as I believe it will, for some medicinal purposes, an article of the materia 
medica, it will require to have a pharmaceutical name appended to it, and perhaps the 
designation of perchloroformene, or the shorter term chlorocarbon, may prove sufficiently 
distinctive. In its chemical constitution, bichloride of carbon, or chlorocarbon, is analo¬ 
gous to chloroform ; with this difference, that the single atom of hydrogen existing in 
chloroform is replaced in chlorocarbon by an atom of chlorine, for the relative chemical 
constitution of these two bodies may be stated as follows :— 
Chloroform = C 2 H Cl 3 . 
Chlorocarbon = C 2 C1C1 3 . 
The chlorocarbon can be made from chloroform by the action of chlorine upon that 
liquid; and Geuther has shown that the process may be also reversed, and chloroform 
produced from chlorocarbon, by treating it in an appropriate vessel with zinc and dilute 
sulphuric acid, and thus exposing it to the action of nascent hydrogen. The most com¬ 
mon way hitherto adopted of forming bichloride of carbon consists in passing the vapour 
of bisulphide or bisulphuret of carbon together with chlorine through a red-hot tube 
either made of porcelain or containing within it fragments of porcelain. There result 
from this process chloride of sulphur and bichloride of carbon, the latter being easily 
separated from the former by the action of potash. 
The bichloride of carbon, or chlorocarbon, is a transparent, colourless fluid having an 
ethereal and sweetish odour, not unlike chloroform. Its specific gravity is great, being 
