SKETCH OF M. PIERRE E. BERTHELOT. 115 



this one, conducted, like it, with very simple compounds, till he was 

 finally led to the artificial composition of the carburets of hydrogen. 

 Among his most important experiments in this line was the artificial 

 production of alcohol from defiant gas. Alcohol once obtained syn- 

 thetically, he had a station whence he could pursue his investigations 

 in various directions. It was not a long step from this to the compo- 

 sition with the same elements (oxygen, hydrogen, and carbon) of a 

 number of volatile organic substances such as the oils of garlic, mus- 

 tard, etc. and then to the formation of glycerine. With these pro- 

 cesses he had built up by synthesis what we might perhaps call the 

 first story of organic chemistry. To complete his work it was neces- 

 sary to produce the saccharine and albuminous substances which con- 

 stitute what might be called, repeating our figure, the second story of 

 the edifice a problem of a more difficult character, because those sub- 

 stances are less stable in their nature, and are more completely decom- 

 posed under energetic chemical reactions. On this subject M. Berthe- 

 lot said, several years ago : " The reconstitution of the saccharine and 

 albuminoid principles is the final object of organic chemistry, the most 

 remote one indeed, but also one of the most important, on account of 

 the essential part which these principles play in our economy. When 

 science attains it, it will be able to realize the synthetic problem in its 

 whole extent that is, to produce, with the elemeuts and by the play 

 of molecular forces alone, all the definite natural compounds and all 

 the changes which matter undergoes in the bodies of living beings." 



"The labors of M. Berthelot in this line," says an enthusiastic 

 French biographer, " constitute one of those events which change the 

 aspect of things, not only by the new processes which they have devel- 

 oped, or by the substances, more or less known, which they have given 

 the means of reproducing, but because they have taken hold bodily of 

 one of the strongest intrenched ideas of mankind and overthrown it. 

 We had been taught that all the complex substances constituting plants 

 and animals were produced wholly under the influence of a special 

 vital force peculiar to organized beings. When it came to verifying 

 the facts in the case, it was found that Nature acts in a more simple 

 way than we had thought, and that she employs those chemical affini- 

 ties that control the metamorphoses of matter equally in executing 

 those immense earth-convulsions that stir the foundations of countries 

 and overthrow cities, and in perfuming a flower by the distillation, 

 molecule by molecule, of its essential oil." 



The fruits of M. Berthelot's investigations in this department of 

 research have been given in a number of publications, among which 

 we may name the " Combinaisons de la glycerine avec les acides, et 

 reproduction des corps gras neutres" ("Combinations of Glycerine 

 with the Acids, and Reproduction of Neutral Fatty Bodies"), 1860 ; 

 various memoirs in the " Annales de physique et de chimie" ; " Chimie 

 organique fondee sur la synthese " (" Organic Chemistry founded on 



