For too long was the conservation of antiquities and works of art relegated to a kind of limbo, being the province of neither the art historian nor the scientist. In ateliers, restoration was carried out with rudimentary knowledge and equipment, arbitrarily. The general direction, however, has tended more and more toward the scientific. Methodology has been improved; specialized equipment has been developed; the literature has grown; the education of conservators has become a separate discipline. This development has been slower in the field of the conservation of works of art on paper and archival materials than in those of oil paintings, sculpture, and antiquities. This thesis was undertaken when it became apparent that there were great gaps in the literature available on paper conservation, as well as conflicting recommendations within the existing documents. This lack was quite evident in the area of spot and stain removal. It was impossible to unearth a single source listing the relative harmfulness of suggested methods of bleaching and spot removal, or even to combine data from a number of sources into a coherent whole. The experimental work had not been performed. Therefore, a program of experiments was designed in order to fill this void.