Creosote particularly used in dentistry to destroy tissues and arrest necrosis. Coal-tar creosote is the most widely used wood treatment today; both industrially, processed into wood using pressure methods such as "full-cell process" or "empty-cell process", and more commonly applied to wood through brushing. In addition to toxicity to fungi, insects, and marine borers, it serves as a natural water repellant. It is commonly used to preserve and waterproof cross ties, pilings, telephone poles, power line poles, marine pilings, and fence posts. Although suitable for use in preserving the structural timbers of buildings, it is not generally used that way because
Cannel coal of the gas burnt. On October 17, 1850, James Young, of Glasgow, Scotland, patented a method for the extraction of paraffin from cannel coal. It was widely used from 1850 to 1860 in the manufacture of coal oil, which today would be called shale oil. The principal consumer product was the illuminating oil kerosene. In 1860, there were 55 companies in the United States making coal oil from cannel coal, most of them near the cannel coal mines, in New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky, and western Virginia (now West Virginia). The discovery of petroleum deposits in the US, starting with