484 
Ethyl  Nitrite. 
Am.  Jour.  Pharm. 
Oct.,  1887. 
ETHYL  NITEITE. 
SOME  EXPERIMENTS  ON  THE  COLOR,  BOILING  POINT  AND  SPECIFIC 
GRAVITY.1 
By  J.  Geo.  Spenzer,  M.  D. 
Last  winter,  while  engaged  in  the  preparation  of  ethyl  nitrite  in 
somewhat  large  quantities,  the  conflict  of  authorities  and  text-books 
upon  the  boiling  point,  color  and  specific  gravity,  which  I  had  ob- 
served several  years  ago  while  preparing  some  experimentally,  recurred 
to  me,  and  I  decided  to  follow  a  line  of  experiments,  which,  although 
not  expecting  to  alter  the  dispute  one  way  or  another,  I  hoped  would 
give  a  happy  medium  of  results  upon  these  points. 
A  short  description  of  the  methods  used  and  a  few  criticisms  on 
the  processes  may  be  of  interest. 
The  methods  employed  were  : 
1.  Liebig.    Liebig' s  Annalen,  vol.  30,  p.  140. 
2.  Emil  Kopp.    Revue  Scientifique,  vol.  27,  p.  273. 
3.  Process  of  United  States  Pharmacopoeia,  1880. 
4.  Carey  Lea.    Americ.  Jour.  Sei.,  2nd  ser.,  vol.  32,  p.  95. 
5.  Grosourdy.  Journal  Chimie  medieale,  or  MuspraWs  Chemistry, 
vol.  1,  p.  834. 
6.  Feldhaus.  Liebig' 's  Annalen,  vol.  126,  p.  71. 
1.  Liebig' s  method  is  the  one  given  in  many  of  the  standard  text 
and  reference  books,  and,  as  far  as  I  can  discern,  yields  a  product 
much  above  any  of  the  others  in  purity.  It  is  prepared  by  passing 
nitrogen  trioxide  (formed  by  heating  starch  and  nitric  acid  in  a  capa- 
cious retort)  into  a  Woulffe  bottle  containing  a  cold  mixture  of  one 
part  of  85  per  cent,  alcohol  and  two  parts  of  water,  the  nitrogen  triox- 
ide passing  through  the  alcohol,  forms  ethyl-nitrite,  which  immedi- 
ately distills  off  and  is  condensed  by  means  of  a  Liebig's  condenser  or 
a  Mohr's  worm  surrounded  with  a  freezing  mixture ;  it  is  then  washed 
with  water  to  remove  alcohol  and  dried  over  calcium  chloride. 
2.  Kopp's  method.  This  is  recommended  by  Beilstein  (Beilstein, 
Handbuch  der  Organischen  Chemie,  vol.  1),  as  forming  a  product 
which  is  but  seldom  equalled. 
It  is  also  the  method  used  by  Strecker  in  his  researches  on  the  ac- 
1  Read  before  the  Ohio  Pharmaceutical  Association  at  Akron,  June  8th,  and 
communicated  by  the  author. 
