ORGANIC BASES. 



Lecture delivered by Professor A. Bauer before the Vienna Society for the Diffusion of 



Scientific Knowledge. 



ITransJafcd for the SmWisoman InstUution.'] 



Althongli bodies having the properties of acids, as, for instance, tar- 

 taric, citric, and malic acids, had long been known to exist in certain 

 vegetable and animal substances, it was reserved for our century to dis- 

 cover bodies of alkaline or basic properties in the organic world. A 

 chemist, Sertiirner by name, first succeeded in isolating morphine from 

 opium, the long-known juice of the poppy, obtained by making incisions 

 into the capsules, and afterwards drying the product in the air. 



Little attention was at first paid to this discovery, because all the 

 energies of chemists had been turned to the study of inorganic chem- 

 istry ; it was out of the regular line of research at the time, and, 

 therefore, remained isolated and unappreciated. When, however, sev- 

 eral years later. Gay Lussac showed the importance of Sertiiruer's dis- 

 covery, and proved himself, in a dissertation published in 181G, that 

 morphine acted like an alkali in regard to vegetable colors and acids, 

 liis work became the incentive to a search for similar bodies in such 

 plants as were known for their sanative or poisonous effects. In many 

 cases their active principle was found to consist in an alkaline substance, 

 combined with an organic acid, and hence called an alkaloid. 



Pelletier and Caventon found alkaloids in Peruvian bark and in the 

 ytrychneacese, and in 1826 Unverdorben succeeded in artiticially preparing 

 several alkaloids or organic bases by the dry distillation of horn, bones, 

 and other animal substances. These discoveries gained for organic bases 

 a place among the most important and interesting bodies in chemistry, 

 and many chemists devoted themselves exclusively to their study. 

 Theoretical considerations concerning the nature of organic bases 

 caused their more extended investigation. These theoretical considera- 

 tion were founded upon the interesting fact of the similarity of all 

 these bases to ammonia. In the natural alkaloids the similarity consists 

 chiefly in the chemical equivalents, but in the artificial bases lately dis- 

 covered it is also exhibited in their physical properties. 



These tacts have led to the supposition that there exists an intimate 

 relation between the organic bases and ammonia. Berzelius, indeed, 

 suggested the probability of the pre-existence of ammonia in all these 

 bases ; while Liebig, in the first volume of his Dictionary of Chemistry, 

 (Handworterbuch der Chemie,) developed a theory concerning their con- 



