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Unlike carbolic acid and other antiseptics it is said
to stimulate the serum instead of impairing its activity. Another
antiseptic of the coal-tar family which has recently been brought into
use by Dr. Dakin of the Rockefeller Institute is that called by European
physicians chloramine-T and by American physicians chlorazene and by
chemists para-toluene-sodium-sulfo-chloramide.
This may serve to illustrate how a chemist is able to make such remedies
as the doctor needs, instead of depending upon the accidental
by-products of plants. On an earlier page I explained how by starting
with the simplest of ring-compounds, the benzene of coal tar, we could
get aniline. Suppose we go a step further and boil the aniline oil with
acetic acid, which is the acid of vinegar minus its water. This easy
process gives us acetanilid, which when introduced into the market some
years ago under the name of "antifebrin" made a fortune for its makers.
The making of medicines from coal tar began in 1874 when Kolbe made
salicylic acid from carbolic acid.


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