Drs. Muspratt and Hofmann on Toluidine. 179 



take a high place in medicine, the arts and commerce. The 

 valerianic acid is already so often employed in medicine, that 

 its production upon a large scale from fusel oil cannot long 

 be postponed, and this becomes the more feasible, as we can 

 obtain the latter in such large quantities as a secondary pro- 

 duct in rectifying distilleries. Of what influence would be 

 the invention of a process for procuring the medicinal ve- 

 getable alkaloids in a simple artificial way? If a chemist 

 should succeed in transforming in an easy manner naphthaline 

 into quinine, we would justly revere him as one of the noblest 

 benefactors of our race. 



Such a transformation has not as yet succeeded, but this 

 does in nowise show its impossibility. We have become ac- 

 quainted in the last ten years with a remarkable series of ar- 

 tificial organic bases, and, with the exception of urea, which 

 in many respects differs from the other organic bases, there 

 is none which has been met with in nature, but there are 

 man}' among them bearing the greatest similarity with the na- 

 tural ones in properties and composition. 



The artificial bases which we now possess have been ob- 

 tained in very different ways. The first bases procured by 

 Liebig*, melamine, ammeline and ammelide, were produced 

 by the decomposition of sulphocyanide of ammonium by heat; 

 and others, such as aniline ^ and chinolineX, were formed by 

 fusing alkalies with organic matters, or by distillation only, 

 as the first mentioned and lophine, recently discovered by 

 Laurent §. Basic bodies have further been produced by the 

 action of ammonia upon organic compounds. To these be- 

 long the Thiosinnamine oi' Will||, and amarine obtained by 

 Laurent** from the hydruret of benzoyle, and another highly 

 remarkable base newly prepared by Fownesff from the so- 

 called artificial oil of ants. Lastly, chemists have succeeded 

 in replacing the sulphur in sulphuretted compounds by oxy- 

 gen, and thus obtaining new bodies possessing basic properties. 

 We see examples of this kind in sinnamine formed by Var- 

 rentrapp and Will from the thiosinnamine ; and Simon's si- 

 napoline, obtained by the desulphuration of oil of mustard. 



These modes, however, for the formation of organic bases 

 are only applicable in a very few cases, as the bodies from 

 which they were derived were themselves more or less insu- 



* Annul, der Chem. und Pharm., vol, x. p. 1. 

 f Fritzsche, Annal. der Chem. und Pharm,, vol. xxxvi. p. 84. 

 X Gerhardt, Annal. der Chem. und Pharm., vol. xlii. p. 310. 

 § Compt. Bend. vol. xviii. p. 1016. 

 II Annal. der Chem. und Pharm., vol. Hi p. 8. 

 ** Compt. Rend., vol. xix. p. 353. 



ft Phil. Trans., 1845. [Phil. Mag. S. 3. vol. xxvi. p. 254.] 

 N2 



