CHEMICAL SCIENCE. 20j 



ON THE PRODUCTION OF ORGANIC BODIES WITHOUT THE AGENCY 



OF VITALITY. 



The following is an abstract of a lecture on this most interesting subject, 

 recently read before the Royal Institution of Great Britain, by Prof. E. Frank- 

 land : 



The earlier researches of chemists brought them into contact with two 

 classes of bodies, distinguished from each other by well-marked and obvious 

 peculiarities. One of them was met with in the inanimate or mineral king- 

 dom, the various materials of which were distinguished by their comparative 

 stability or resistance to change, and by the facility with which the greater 

 number of them could be artificially produced from the elementary bodies 

 composing them. The other class of bodies was found exclusively in the 

 animate portion of creation, or was directly derived from the productions of 

 the organs of plants and of animals ; these compounds were distinguished 

 by their proneness to undergo change, and by the impossibility of producing 

 them by artificial means. By no processes then known to chemists could the 

 elements composing these latter bodies be made to unite so as to produce 

 compounds, either identical with or analogous to the substances generated 

 by the organs of plants and of animals. These substances were conse- 

 quently, from their origin, termed organic bodies, or organic compounds. They 

 were regarded as dependent for their origin upon the influence of that aggre- 

 gate of conditions sometimes called the vital force ; and it was generally 

 believed that we should never succeed in producing these bodies artificially, 

 until we could form and endow with vitality the organs from which they 

 were derived. Such was the state of knowledge and opinion until the year 

 1828, when Wohler succeeded in artificially producing urea, a body which 

 had, up to that time, been known only as a product of the animal organism.* 

 This discovery was followed, many years later, by the artificial formation of 

 acetic acid, which was produced by Kolbe from a mixture of protochloride 

 of carbon, water, and chlorine exposed to sunlight; the chloracetic acid thus 

 obtained being afterwards converted into acetic acid by an amalgam of po- 

 tassium. The subsequent production of methyl, by the same chemist, from 

 acetic acid, added one of the organic radicals to the list of compounds produ- 

 cible from their elements. Although little further progress was made for sev- 

 eral years in this department of chemical research, yet the artificial produc- 

 tion of urea and acetic acid, together with their derivatives, completely 

 broke down the barrier between so-called "organic" and "inorganic" 

 bodies ; and although the name " organic " was still retained for the class of 

 bodies to which it had previously been assigned, it was now obviously no 

 longer strictly applicable. The recent ingenious researches of M. Berthelot 

 have greatly extended this branch of chemical inquiry, and have in a most 

 important degree increased the number of bodies capable of artificial forma- 

 tion. The pi-oduction of chloride of methyl, and the members of the ole- 

 fiant gas family up to amylene (CioHio) furnish us with the whole series of 

 alcohols and their derivatives, from amylic alcohol downwards. Phenylic 

 alcohol and napthaline, both artificially produced by Berthelot, yield a host 

 of interesting bodies ; whilst phenylcarbamic acid enables us to step from 

 the phenylic to the salicylic group, since, when treated with hyponitrous 



* The artificial formation of urea from cyanate of ammonia was exhibited under 

 the influence of polarized electric light. 



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