ARTIFICIAL PREPARATION OF ORGANIC BODIES. 727 



community. The fight has been carried on to a great extent blind- 

 ly, and most attempts to establish order have only succeeded in in- 

 creasing the confusion. Sorties from the camp of " the fathers " 

 have been made, and weapons have been carried back ; but, alas ! the 

 weapons were useless, or, if used, they injured the user. The con- 

 flict is still waging, and it will continue to wage. Occasionally faint 

 promises of a better understanding are given, but some misguided en- 

 thusiast, on one side or the other, hastens to destroy the hopes of a 

 happy issue. The frequent shocks received by " the fathers " have 

 unduly excited them, and they look upon each advance of science as 

 something dangerous. Often they do not stop to examine whether 

 the movement of the hostile party is, or is not, antagonistic to their 

 position, but blindly throw their whole force against it, and anxiously 

 look for the results of the crash. It sometimes happens that they 

 thus waste their force, and weaken themselves for future necessary 

 encounters. 



Droj^ping the figure, we may safely assert that those who are 

 avowedly the opponents of science, though their objects may be the 

 highest though they may be actuated by only noble desires have, 

 unfortunately, from time to time brought ridicule upon themselves 

 by upholding views which were not tenable, and which a careful ex- 

 amination and thorough knowledge of the subject would show to be 

 unnecessary for the support of their theories. These somewhat trite 

 remarks lead to a consideration of the subject embraced in the title 

 of this paper. 



There are certain chemical substances known to us which only 

 occur in the organs of plants or animals. The number of these sub- 

 stances at present known is very great, and new ones are being rapid- 

 ly added to the list. They consist often of but three elements car- 

 bon, oxygen, and hydrogen ; sometimes nitrogen is added to these, 

 and, rarely, phosphorus or sulj^hur. Notwithstanding the fact that 

 they are made up of few constituents, they are usually of compli- 

 cated structure ; indeed, the complication in some of them is so great 

 that, with our present means of analysis, we are unable to express 

 their composition by means of satisfactory formulae. The substances 

 referred to have been known by the name organic bodies. 



Up to within a few years chemists were, to a certain extent, justi- 

 fied in drawing a line of division between two classes of bodies, both 

 occurring in Nature : 1. Those which can be prepared in the labora- 

 tory ; 2. Those which cannot be prepared in the laboratory. The sec- 

 ond class included the so-called organic bodies. These were known to 

 occur only in the organs of plants or animals. The two facts, taken 

 together, wei'e significant, and but little surprise can be expressed 

 that a connection was traced between them. The simplest conclu- 

 sion that could be drawn from the premises icas drawn, and the sci- 

 entific world, buoyed up by certain preconceived notions in regard 



