THE SYNTHESIS OF LIVING BEINGS. 49 



THE SYNTHESIS OF LIVING BEINGS. 



Br M. AEMAND SABATIEE. 



IF it is true that crude or dead matter and living matter are not 

 separated by any impassable gulf, it seems reasonable to think 

 that the resources of our laboratories, of which the power is in- 

 creasing every day, will be able at some time to prove themselves 

 capable of producing living matter from mineral. I purpose to dis- 

 cuss the legitimacy of this hope, taking into the account the results 

 that have been already obtained, and appreciating the value of the 

 objections that are opposed to it. It has long been supposed that 

 the very complex substances that are the basis of living beings 

 (plants and animals) could not be reproduced in laboratories by 

 the simple combination of the forces which the chemist employs, 

 and which reside in dead matter. " Vital force only," Gerhardt 

 has said, " operates by synthesis and reconstructs the edifice that 

 has been beaten down by chemical forces" ; and Pasteur says, " We 

 have not yet realized the production of a dissymmetrical body 

 by the aid of compounds that are not so." These words of two 

 illustrious chemists have met in modern labors a denial which is 

 becoming every day more emphatic. Chemistry has entered upon 

 the road of the synthesis of organic compounds, and has recently 

 made a remarkable step, and has gone beyond a point which had 

 been considered impassable. 



Wokler made the first synthesis in 1828, and obtained urea 

 through the reaction of ammonia on cyanic acid. By taking sim- 

 ple bodies as the point of departure, we have been able to repro- 

 duce the carburets of hydrogen and formic acid ; from the car- 

 burets we have gone up to the alcohols and to alhtheir derivatives.* 

 Berthelot produced alcohol by bringing together the gaseous body 

 ethylene and sulphuric acid. The product of this reaction, de- 

 composed by water, furnished alcohol. Wurtz obtained the syn- 

 thesis of alcohol in another way. He subjected aldehyde to the 

 action of nascent hydrogen, and alcohol was produced by the di- 

 rect fixation of the hydrogen. As my colleague, M. Oeschner de 

 Coninck, has remarked to me, this synthesis is of particular inter- 

 est from the biological point of view, with which I am especially 

 occupied ; for everything tends to prove that this is the way alco- 

 hol is produced in plants. We are then in the presence of a case 

 where the forces of the laboratory follow, for a given end, the 

 same course as the forces of living Nature. 



A considerable number of alkaloids of vegetable origin have 

 been obtained directly by synthesis. M. Oeschner de Coninck, ap- 



* P. Schutzenberger, Chimie appliquee a la physiologic animale, etc. Paris, 1864. 

 vol. xlii. — i 



