614 
RHIGOLENE, FOR PRODUCING ANAESTHESIA. 
and spare bottles for twopence, so that a sixpenny feeding-bottle can be pur¬ 
chased for fivepence, and in some cases fourpence-halfpenny. O temporal 
O mores ! “ Where are we drifting ?” I can understand the oil-shop chemists 
cutting down the prices of everything—but Pharmaceutical Chemists ? 
Faugh! I put it to the trade generally, and more particularly to members 
of the Society, is it consistent with the dignity of a noble and enlightened 
profession thus to enter into competition with such recreants? For my own 
part, I think it advisable to abandon the sixpenny feeder trade, and let it 
go to those chemists and druggists whose minds are on a level with the 
pennyworths of blacking, snuff, hair oil, etc., they delight in vending. 
Whilst I write, my risible faculties have been excited to their utmost ten¬ 
sion by sight of a “ feeding-bottle ” which a woman has brought in to be 
fitted with a “ penny india-rubber teat.” An ingenious chemist in the town 
had contrived to insert a bung into the mouth of a male glass urinal , and, 
with the addition of the ordinary fittings, had produced for threepence a 
feeding-bottle, which, if not altogether sightly, had at least the merit of 
combining the flat with the upright. 
I leave these facts to the consideration of your readers, and remain, Sir, 
Yours very truly, 
Sheffield. PHARMACEUTIST. 
RHIGOLENE * * * § A PETROLEUM NAPHTHA FOR PRODUCING 
ANAESTHESIA BY FREEZING. 
[Read before the Boston Society for Medical Improvement, April 9tb, 1866,f and communi¬ 
cated for tlie ‘Boston Medical and Surgical Journal.’] 
BY HENRY J. BIGELOW, M.D., PROFESSOR OF SURGERY IN THE MASSACHUSETTS 
MEDICAL COLLEGE. 
The above name is proposed as convenient to designate a petroleum naphtha boiling 
at 70° F., one of the most volatile liquids obtained by the distillation of petroleum, and 
which has been applied to the production of cold by evaporation. It is a hydrocarbon, 
wholly destitute of oxygen, and is the lightest of all known liquids, having a specific 
gravity of 0625. It has been shown that petroleum, vaporized and carefully condensed 
at different temperatures, offers a regular series of products which present more material 
differences than that of their degree of volatility,]: and that the present product is pro¬ 
bably a combination of some of the known products of petroleum with those volatile and 
gaseous ones not yet fully examined, and to which this fluid owes its great volatility. 
A few of these combinations are already known in trade, as benzolene, kerosene, keroso- 
lene, gasolene, etc., all of them naphthas, but varying with different manufacturers. I 
procured, in 1861, a quantity of kerosolene§ of four different densities, and found the 
lightest of them, the boiling-point of which was about 90°, to be an efficient anaesthetic 
by inhalation.|| When it was learned here that Dr. Richardson, of London, had pro- 
* Rhigolene, from piyos, extreme cold , to which is added the euphonious termination of 
most of the other petroleum naphthas. 
f About three weeks after my first experiments with rhigolene, I first learned that Prof. 
Simpson, of Edinburgh, had lately employed “kerosolene” for this purpose. 
X See Researches on the Volatile Hydrocarbons, with references to authorities, by C. M. 
Warren. American Journal of Science and Arts, July, September, and November, 1865. 
§ The kerosolene was furnished by Mr. Merrill, Superintendent of the Downer Kerosene 
Oil Co., South Boston. 
|| An account of these experiments may be found in this Journal, July 11,1861. Reference 
is made to them in a paper “ On the Most Volatile Constituents of American Petroleum,” 
by Edmund Ronalds, Ph.D., in the Journal of the Chemical Society, London, February, 1865. 
Mr. Ronalds there states that “ the most volatile liquid obtained by collecting the first runnings 
from the stills employed in the process of refining petroleum has a specific gravity of 0 , 666.” 
He had also received a specimen of “ kerosolene ” from Prof. Simpson, of Edinburgh, at 0*633. 
It will be observed, that the Rhigolene lias a specific gravity of 0*625. 
