CHEMICAL SCIENCE. 



CHEMICAL SYNTHESIS. 



The Paris correspondent of Sillimari's Journal (see No. 92, March, 

 1861) makes the following interesting statements on the future of 

 Synthetic Chemistry, or the prospective manufacture of organic sub- 

 stances by the aid of chemical forces only. He says : 



The most remarkable scientific event of modern times is the publi- 

 cation of a treatise on chemistry, proceeding on the same plan in 

 organic chemistry as has been adopted for a century past in mineral 

 chemistry ; that is, forming organic substances synthetically by com- 

 bining their elements by the aid of chemical forces only. The author 

 who has performed demonstrations by this method is Berthelot, who 

 has been occupied with organic synthesis since he first devoted himself 

 to chemistry. Berthelot is not a vitalist ; he is convinced that " we 

 may undertake to form, de novo, all the substances which have been 

 developed from the origin of things, and to form them under the same 

 conditions, by virtue of the same laws and by means of the same forces 

 which nature employs for their formation." Let us hasten to add a 

 distinction upon which Berthelot properly insists, and which it is 

 necessary to recognize, between organs and the matter of which they 

 are composed. " No chemist pretends to form in his laboratory a 

 leaf, a flower, a fruit or a muscle ; these questions relate to physiology." 

 This distinction being admitted, and calling to mind the syntheses 

 recently effected, such as the direct preparation of C 4 H 4 from carbon 

 and hydrogen, and alcohol from the union of C 4 H 4 and water, we may 

 understand the possibility of performing for organic chemistry what 

 has been done for mineral chemistry, and to give to it a basis indepen- 

 dent of the phenomena of life. 



"I have taken for a point of departure the simple bodies, carbon, 

 hydrogen, oxygen and nitrogen, and I have constructed, by combina- 

 tion of these elements, organic compounds, first binary, than ternary, 

 etc., the former analogous and the latter identical with the proximate 

 principles contained in living beings themselves." Notice the pro- 

 gressive order of these synthetic formations. " The substances which 

 we first prepare by methods purely chemical are the principal carbides 

 of hydrogen, that is to say, the fundamental binary compounds of 

 organic chemistry. As a means of producing all the parts from the 



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