Coal-Tar

Abstract

A couple of centuries have just elapsed since the first English patent was granted to Becker and Serle for “a new way of makeing pitch and tarre out of pit coale, never before found out or used by any other”; and in 1742 a second patent was obtained by M. and T. Betton for the manufacture of “an oyle extracted from a flinty rock for the cure of rheumatick, and scorbutick, and other cases.” Whether we have here a foreshadowing of the antiseptic method of treatment is impossible to say, but that there was virtue of another sort in coal-tar was fully recognised by the Earl of Dundonald, the father of brave Lord Cochrane, who, towards the close of the last century, set up tar ovens on a pretty extensive scale in Ayrshire.

A Treatise on the Distillation of Coal-Tar and Ammoniacal Liquor, and the Separation from them of Valuable Products.

By George Lunge, Professor of Technical Chemistry in the Federal Polytechnic School, Zurich. (London: Van Voorst, 1882.)