THE  AMERICAN 
JOURNAL  OF  PHARMACY. 
JULY,  1889. 
ON  RECENT  IMPROVEMENTS  IN  THE  METHODS  FOR 
THE  MANUFACTURE  OF  CHLOROFORM. 
By  Samuel  P.  Sadtlee,  Ph.  D. 
It  is  of  course  within  the  knowledge  of  the  drug  and  chemical  trade 
that  along  in  the  fall  of  1885,  a  notable  reduction  in  the  price  of 
chloroform  took  place,  and  that  this  reduction  has  been  practically 
maintained  since.  Such  a  change  indicates  that  either  there  has  been  a 
notable  cheapening  of  the  raw  material  of  manufacture,  a  decided  im- 
provement in  existing  methods  or  the  introduction  of  an  entirely  new 
method  for  the  manufacture  of  the  staple  so  cheapened.  In  the  case 
of  chloroform,  it  has  been  the  latter. 
The  old  process  of  manufacture  by  the  action  of  bleaching  powder 
upon  alcohol  has  given  way  to  what  is  now  termed  the  "  acetone  " 
process.  This  is  not,  however,  a  new  discovery.  Liebig,  in  1832,  in 
following  up  his  first  account  of  the  properties  of  the  newly  discovered 
"  chloride  of  carbon  "  (chloroform),  mentions  that  it  can  be  gotten  in 
very  large  quantities  by  the  action  of  bleaching  powder  upon  "  pyro- 
acetic  spirit "  (acetone)  as  well  as  from  alcohol.  That  alcohol  has  all 
this  time  been  preferred  to  acetone  as  a  material  from  which  to  pre- 
pare chloroform,  is  due  mainly  to  the  fact  that  only  in  recent  years  has 
acetone  been  prepared  pure  in  quantity,  but  also  to  the  erroneous  state- 
ment of  Siemerling  quoted  in  the  works  of  reference  like  Watts'  Dic- 
tionary of  Chemistry  that  only  33  per  cent,  of  chloroform  could  be 
gotten  from  acetone  by  the  action  of  bleaching  powder.  Now  that 
acetone  is  made  on  a  large  scale,  and  of  extreme  purity,  and  it  has  been 
shown  that  it  is  the  richest  chloroform-yielding  substance  known  (206 
per  cent,  by  theory  and  200  per  cent,  in  practice  at  times),  the  case 
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