156  Acetone  and  Acetone-Chloroform.  {AmMarch,1i8^m" 
But  the  Siemerling  results  were  very  faulty  and  very  misleading 
in  other  respects.  The  present  writer,  having  learned  from  all  the 
work  of  the  past  on  the  subject  that  any  excess  of  acetone  used 
could  be  easily  recovered  and  used  again,  added  to  this  knowledge,, 
from  his  own  experience,  the  fact  that,  where  an  excess  of  acetone 
was  taken,  the  hypochlorite  was  more  economically  and  more 
promptly  utilized,  and  the  resulting  chloroform  was  cleaner.  Hav- 
ing gained  from  the  Siemerling  process  this  step,  the  writer  was 
prepared  to  try  that  proportion  and  process  critically,  and  he  found 
that,  as  a  table  experiment,  it  was  quite  impracticable,  by  any  reason- 
able degree  of  mismanagement,  to  obtain  so  low  a  result.  In  two 
fairly  careless  trials  from  30  grammes  of  96  per  cent,  acetone,  the 
yield  of  chloroform  was  23  grammes  in  one  case  and  32  grammes  in 
the  other,  instead  of  Siemerling's  10  grammes.  In  larger  trials  of 
his  proportions  up  to  280  pounds  of  absolute  acetone  to  one  cask  of 
1,400  pounds  of  33  per  cent,  bleaching  powder  in  one  charge,  the 
yield  was  not  less  than  200  pounds  of  chloroform,  and  about  130 
pounds  of  recovered  acetone,  thus  proving  conclusively  the  gravity 
of  the  unaccountable  errors  of  the  Siemerling  work,  and  showing  a 
basis  for  the  mischief  done  by  this  bad  work. 
Looking  back  from  this  later  day  at  the  authoritative  way  in  which 
these  mistakes  and  misstatements  of  Siemerling  were  published  and 
quoted,  it  is  easy  to  see  that  nothing  could  be  better  adapted  to 
obstruct  or  prevent  any  increase  in  the  general  production  of  ace- 
tone-chloroform, and  to  confine  its  production  to  those  manufactur- 
ers who  were  using  the  process  secretly. 
One  of  the  definite  evil  consequences  of  this  Siemerling  paper  was 
the  adoption  of  its  erroneous  results  as  the  basis  of  the  following 
patent : 
On  June  23,  1886,  Gustav  Rumpf  applied  for  a  patent,  and  on 
July  5,  1888,  patent  No.  383,992  was  issued  to  him  for  the  inven- 
tion of  "  a  new  and  useful  Improvement  in  the  Manufacture  of 
Chloroform  from  Acetone,"  of  which  the  following  is  a  specification  : 
"  The  essential  feature  of  this  invention  is  based  on  the  discovery 
that  acetone,  when  treated  in  the  proper  way  with  a  hypochlorite — 
for  example,  chloride  of  lime— will  yield  a  larger  quantity  of  chloro- 
form than  has  been  heretofore  known.  Watts,  in  his  Dictionary  of 
Chemistry,  edition  of  1883,  Vol.  I,  page  918,  says  that  the  manu- 
facture of  chloroform  from  acetone  cannot  usefully  be  carried  out* 
