While it is true that the use of drugs can cause some effects on the body, the use of drugs may be the most convenient and quickest way. Under normal circumstances, it is not possible to stay awake and put the body to sleep, but it is possible to use special drugs, such as anesthetics.

There are many types of anesthetics, such as solid types, gas types, and liquid types, and what Richard is trying to make now is a solid plant alkaloid anesthetic.

Generally speaking, the preparation of this type of anesthetic is very simple, because many plants contain this ingredient in their bodies, such as Solanaceae, Fabaceae, Trichoaceae, and Papaveraceae in dicots. Only plant raw materials need to be added to the instrument, and after a series of chemical reactions, impurities are removed to obtain high-purity alkaloids.

Richard thought, and operated.

Complex instrumentation is constantly at work, distillation, condensation, filtration, extraction, precipitation, dissolution, crystallization......

"Puff puff", a large amount of white vapor comes out, "pop pop", the lid of the jar keeps jumping, "tick tock", a drop of yellow liquid drips out of the horn tube, "goo goo", a large number of bubbles come out of the beaker......

......

After a long time, the whole experimental process reaches the final stage, as the temperature of the liquid in a beaker gradually cools down, the crystals precipitate out, showing a muddy yellow, as if the inside is covered with some dust.

Richard just glanced at it, and then couldn't help but shake his head, knowing that this first attempt had failed, and the reason was simple - there were impurities.

There is nothing wrong with my own experimental process, which has taken into account the removal of various impurities, but the whole experiment is more than 20 links, subject to the current world of making instruments, and each link will produce a small error.

One error or two errors are acceptable, but ten or twenty errors are somewhat fatal, and the cumulative quantitative change leads to qualitative change, completely polluting the crystallization of the final product that should be pure, so that it cannot be used.

Failed!

Richard shook his head again, but he didn't look annoyed. Because after coming to this world, it has been fifteen years, and I have already understood what kind of world this is, even if I am angry, it is useless, no matter how strict the craftsmen are, there are always errors in the instruments made.

The only way to solve this problem is to choose...... Take a different path.

"Solid plant alkaloid anesthetic cannot be produced, so we can only see if the gas anesthetic and liquid anesthetic can be prepared. Richard muttered to himself, took a blank papyrus scroll from the wooden shelf on one side, found a place on the black walnut table, and sat upright with a quill and began to write and draw and organize his thoughts.

"Rustling ......"

For the preparation of gas anesthetics, Richard had a record in mind, that is, the production of the famous "laughing gas", that is, nitrous oxide (N20).

It is a colorless, sweet gas, whose anesthetic effect was discovered in 1799 by the British chemist Humphrey Davy in the history of modern earth. Later, it was widely used in the field of dentistry, because it allowed the patient to maintain consciousness while losing the sense of pain, and was able to respond orally according to the dentist's instructions, which brought great convenience to the dentist.

On top of that, this gaseous anesthetic is simple to construct and can be prepared with only one thermal decomposition reaction. To be precise, ammonium nitrate (NH4NO3) is heated to decompose it into nitrous oxide (N2O) and water (H2O), and the nitrous oxide can be collected by drainage.

Thinking of this, Richard wrote the words "ammonium nitrate" in the center of the papyrus scroll, but for a moment he frowned, thinking that there should be no such thing as ammonium nitrate in the current world.

Because ammonium nitrate is not a natural substance, but a chemical product, it was not until the end of the 19th century that it was industrially produced. If you want to use the industrial method, you need to use ammonium sulfate and Chilean saltpeter for metathesis reaction.

"Rustling ......" Soon, on the papyrus scroll, the words "ammonium sulfate" and "Chilean saltpeter" were added next to the "ammonium nitrate" in the middle.

Richard's eyes first fell on ammonium sulfate, which is generally neutralized with ammonium hydroxide and sulfuric acid, crystallized, centrifuged and dried. Sulfuric acid has its own, but ammonia hydroxide does not, and it needs to be prepared chemically......

Turning his head, Richard's gaze fell on Chilean saltpeter again. The main component of Chilean saltpeter is sodium nitrate (NaNO3), which can only be synthesized from metal sodium and nitric acid on the basis of not obtaining raw ore. Nitric acid is easy to say, but sodium is hard to find in this world. Table salt contains sodium, but electrolysis is required to separate it, which requires electricity......

"Rustling ......" Richard wrote more and more on the papyrus, and when he finally stopped, he had already written a full slice. If you follow the operation written on the papyrus scroll, let alone twenty links, even forty links are less.

The main reason for this situation is the current limitation of the world's scientific and technological level, because there is no industrialization, so many raw materials that should be easily obtained cannot be obtained, and can only be synthesized with the most basic and common substances, which is bound to increase the workload and difficulty.

"Whew", exhaling and rubbing his eyebrows, Richard had already decided to give up on the second attempt for the time being, and see how the third attempt went.

The third attempt was to produce a liquid anesthetic, and Richard was more optimistic about ether (C4H10O).

Ether is the most well-known anesthetic for ordinary people, even if they have not seen it in reality, but in various movies, you will often see such a scene: the bad guy uses a handkerchief soaked in liquid to cover the victim's mouth and nose, the victim inhales nervously, inhales the volatile liquid into the body, and then the body is soft and unconscious.

In the bridge, the liquid in the handkerchief is ether, which is a colorless and transparent liquid, which is highly volatile and extremely anesthetic efficiently.

However, it is not easy to prepare this ether, and the industrial production method requires alumina as a catalyst. Alumina, or metallic aluminum, is ten or a hundred times more scarce than gold and precious stones in the current medieval-like world.

Although the content of aluminum in the earth's crust ranks third after oxygen and silicon, it is not easy to be reduced from its compounds due to the weak oxidation of aluminum compounds, so it is not possible to separate metallic aluminum. It was not until 1854 on the modern earth that the German chemist Deville used sodium instead of potassium to reduce aluminum chloride to make pure aluminum ingots. For a long time after that, because it was extremely difficult to produce, aluminum was a treasure that only the emperors and nobles could enjoy.

For example, the French Emperor Napoleon III used an aluminum fork at a banquet, the King of Thailand used an aluminum bracelet, in 1855 it was exhibited at the Paris Exposition with the crown jewel with the label "Silver from Clay", and in 1889, the London Chemical Society gave a vase and cup made of aluminum alloy as a gift......

In the current world, if you are going to take alumina from scratch and use it as a catalyst for experimentation, I am afraid that it will be more difficult than killing a dragon by an unarmed farmer, but ......

"There's no way, I'm stumped on the first so-called reshaping of life......" Richard muttered to himself, tapping lightly on the table.

"Click, click, click...... Smack!" Suddenly Richard's fingers stopped, he thought of something, his eyes sharpened, "I'll ...... later"