"Buchan's Carbolics Disinfecting Soap" Trifold Wallet

Imagine yourself back a hundred years or so and in keeping yourself clean and germ free would've been a rough, harsh world, typified by one hard-boiled term. Carbolic. Throughout the 1800's a means of disinfecting and cleansing would have meant you bought a bar(s) of either Buchan's or Wrights carbolic soap to use. Carbolic acid, is a compound that is extracted from coal tar. Phenol, the proper name of carbolic acid, is one of the simplest aromatic compounds – a benzene ring with a single hydrogen replaced by a hydroxyl group – yet it has proved of continuing value as new uses have been found for it, resulting in modern production levels in the millions of tonnes per year. The original name is a direct derivative from the German term Karbolsäure, meaning coal-oil acid, given to it by discoverer Friedlieb Ferdinand Runge, the German chemist who extracted the substance from coal tar in 1834. The current name, phenol, was given to it by French chemist Charles Gerhardt, basing it on ‘phene’, a term for benzene devised by his colleague Auguste Laurent, who was the first to produce the white crystals of pure phenol, with their distinctive smell that we associate with disinfectant, in 1841.