MODERN BIOLOGY 371 



Brought up in poverty, he received financial aid for his medical studies 

 from Vicq d'Azyr and when still a young man became a professor of chem- 

 istry. He was a zealous supporter of the Revolution, was a member of the 

 famous committee of public safety, and eventually became director-general 

 of instruction. In a handbook that he wrote on chemistry, Philosophie chi- 

 mique, as well as in a number of other writings, he deals exhaustively with 

 animal chemistry; the so-called "chemical philosophy" excited consider- 

 able attention and was translated into several languages. In this work an 

 account is given of the chemical composition of plants and animals. The 

 essential difference between substances derived from the vegetable and the 

 animal kingdom is claimed to be the latter's azotic content. Vegetable ele- 

 ments are divided into sixteen separate substances, including gum, sugar, 

 fatty and fugitive oils, resin, etc. The elements derived from the animal king- 

 dom form three groups: albumen, lime, and fibrin; characteristic of both 

 the vegetable and animal kingdoms arc fermentative processes of various 

 kinds, whereof is described the fermenting of wine and vinegar, and putre- 

 faction. Besides this grouping of the components of living creatures, 

 Fourcroy has given us the results of a large number of valuable special 

 investigations into animal substances: milk, blood, gall, serum, and others. 

 His services have been fully acknowledged by Berzelius, who was the great 

 discoverer in this sphere as much as he was in chemistry in general. 



Jons Jakob Berzelius was born in 1779 at Vaversunda in Ostergotland, 

 Sweden, the son of a poor priest. Being left an orphan at an early age, he 

 had to carry out his studies under severe privations, first of all earning his 

 living by private teaching and practising as an apothecary, and later, hav- 

 ing taken the degree of bachelor of medicine, in medical practice. In 1809 he 

 became a doctor of medicine and obtained an appointment as doctor at the 

 College of Surgery in Stockholm (out of which, thanks mainly to his ac- 

 tivities, the Carolinian Institute was eventually founded). Here he had a 

 laboratory in which he was able to apply himself to those chemical investi- 

 gations which in a few years were to bring him world-wide fame. An un- 

 rivalled capacity for work made it possible for him, apart from his research 

 and literary work, to devote himself to a large number of public duties — 

 thus, he became permanent secretary to the Academy of Science, whose an- 

 nual report he used to write in a masterly style — and he was also the recipi- 

 ent of innumerable honours both at home and abroad. Ill health weakened 

 his powers during the last years of his life. He died in 1848. 



Berzelius' s animal chemistry 

 Berzelius's work as the creator of the science of chemistry in general is 

 universally known, and falls, moreover, outside the scope of this history. 

 In actual fact, he mastered the whole of chemistry as no one else has ever 

 done since his time, and he created something new in all the spheres in which 



