Methylated Spirit
Methylene is a highly volatile and inflammable liquid produced from the destructive distillation of wood; whence Methylated Spirit, or wood spirit. It is permitted to be used, duty free, in arts and manufactures. Hitherto, no effort to obtain a potable spirit from methylated alcohol has succeeded. A patent has been granted for a process which professes not only to accomplish this object, but to render wood spirit itself potable, and that, too, at a cost almost nominal; and it has afforded matter for earnest discussion among some of our leading pharmacologists, who, anxious to preserve the integrity of medicinal preparations, have not unreasonably been alarmed by the assertion that wood spirit can be so far defecated as to render it almost indistinguishable from vinous alcohol, and by the exhibition of specimens of such spirit which might be used, instead of spirits of wine, for pharmaceutical purposes. But after a series of experiments, Mr. Phillips, of the Revenue Laboratory, has not been able by the process indicated to render either methylated or wood spirit potable, although it was submitted to numerous successive distillations, which from their costliness could not be applied profitably on a commercial scale.
One of the latest Acts passed, Session 1863, was to reduce the duty on rum. It recites that by the Act 18th and 19th Victoria, cap. 38, spirit of wine was allowed to be methylated duty free; and that it is expedient to allow foreign and colonial rum to be methylated, on payment of reduced duty. Rum may now be “methylated” in the Customs’ warehouse; but the wood naphtha, or methylic alcohol, or other article to be mixed with the rum, is to be provided by the Inland Revenue Commissioners; and the mixture is to be denominated “methylated spirits,” and such spirits may be exported.
Meanwhile, the Inland Revenue returns in 1863 showed a decreased consumption of spirit, from the fact of methylated spirit taking the place of duty-paid or pure spirit. Of the one article of spirit of nitre, very little is sold which is not distilled from “methylated finish.” This increased quantity of sweet spirit of nitre sold is not taken medicinally, but is extensively used in the adulteration of potable spirits.