172 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY. 



elements themselves, we take oxide of carbon, that is to say, a substance 

 purely mineral, and by the concurrent influence of time and ordinary 

 affinity we combine this oxide of carbon with the elements of water 

 (e. g., by the aid of pressure and the presence of an alkali) ; we 

 thus obtain a first organic compound, known as formic acid. This 

 acid, united to a mineral base, produces a formate ; then, decomposing 

 this formate by heat, we compel the carbon of the oxide of carbon and 

 the hydrogen of the water to combine in the nascent state and produce 

 carbid of hydrogen. Thus there is formed marsh gas, propylene, etc. 

 etc. This is the first step of synthesis." 



The hydrocarbons thus prepared become the starting point for the 

 synthesis of alcohols ; with marsh gas and oxygen we form methylic 

 alcohol ; with olefiant gas and water, ordinary alcohol, etc. 



The synthetic production of carbids of hydrogen and of alcohols 

 constitutes the true difficulty, but we know that even in this Bcrthe- 

 lot has triumphed. The alcohols once obtained, it is easy to obtain 

 the greater part of the other organic compounds by the ordinary 

 chemical forces. This chemist has thus established the fact that- 

 organic chemistry reposes upon the same basis as mineral chemistry. 



What has been said of the alcohols may also be said of various 

 other classes of organic compounds, and among others of that new 

 group, which Berthelot calls the Phenols, and to which he has devoted 

 a very interesting chapter. Phenol, or carbolic acid, C 12 H G O 2 , the 

 type of this group, may also be obtained by direct synthesis. 



CHEMISTRY AND MEDICINE. 



The following is an extract of a lecture recently delivered in Lon- 

 don by Prof. Hoffmann, the well-known chemist : 



Valuable as have been the fruits of chemical inquiry, still more 

 may be expected from the further prosecution of this study. The 

 notion that the action of most of our medicines is chemical, is daily 

 growing into a general conviction. We admit that with every change 

 wrought by pharmaceutical agents in the state of our organism, there 

 occurs a corresponding change in its composition, resulting from their 

 reaction on one or more of its constituents. But of these transforma- 

 tions, which doubtless could be expressed in numbers as definitely as 

 can our laboratory processes, how few are we in a condition to explain ; 

 in how few instances has the physician even a vague conception of 

 the mode in which any medicine performs its office ! Nobody doubts 

 the power which the principles of the Chinchona bark, or of tea and 

 coffee, exert upon the living body, but we are perfectly in the dark 

 as to the way in which they act upon the animal economy. But if we 

 meet with a series of similar substances in several animal fluids, e. g., 

 urea and creatine almost constantly present in urine, glycocoll gener- 

 ally, and cystine occasionally, excreted in the same liquid, and if we 

 find that all these substances exhibit in their chemical relations a close 

 analogy with quinine and theine, we begin to feel a sort of anticipa- 

 tion of the manner in which these agents may act upon the system. 

 Such examples illustrate at once the nature of the aid which the 

 therapeutics may confidently expect from the progress of organic 

 chemistry. Medicine some years ago found itself in a predicament 



