198 ORGANIC BASES. 



This enormous number shows how impossible it is, in si^ite of the 

 most persevering labors, to become acquainted with more than a very 

 small proportion of these compounds. This very number urges us to 

 study only the prominent representatives of whole series, and to give to 

 them our whole time and energies. 



From what has been said in regard to the composition of organic bases, 

 it was thought evident that nitrogen would appear to be the component on 

 which their properties depend, for they all contain nitrogen. But we know 

 now whole series of analogous bases containing, instead of nitrogen, 

 some other element of similar properties. These also have the charac- 

 teristics of ammonia. As early as 1846, Paul Thenard had made phos- 

 phorus bases, which were more thoroughly investigated in 1855 by 

 Hofmann and Cahours. Analogous arsenic bases have been known 

 much longer. In 1700 Cadet prepared one, the composition of which he 

 could not, of course, explain. The investigations of Buusen, from 1837 to 

 1813, shed more light on this remarkable class of organic bodies, and 

 the constitution of the arsenic bases was finally completely made clear 

 by the researches of Cahours, Kolbe, Eiche, and especially Baeyer, in 

 Berlin. In 1850 Lowig discovered antimony and bismuth bases, so 

 that we now have four other elements capable of forming whole series 

 of basic combinations like those of nitrogen. Compare these with the 

 above-mentioned number of possible nitrogen bases, and we will be con- 

 vinced that the chemist as well as the astronomer is able to astonish us 

 with magnificent numbers, and to call up before the mind's eye endless 

 series of i)ossible combinations, all producing bodies having special 

 qualities. 



However much these researches have extended our knowledge, they 

 have but slightly improved our acquaintance with the bases and alka- 

 loids spontaneously formed in nature. The constitution and the rela- 

 tions of these natural alkaloids to the other bases and to other chem- 

 ical compounds are much less understood than the foregoing statement 

 would lead us to suppose. The causes of this are that the natural al- 

 kaloids are mostly very complex bodies, and that they suffer such com- 

 plete changes in most reactions, that it is difficult to study them, or 

 to form any conclusion as to the constitution they had before they were 

 decomposed. It must be left to the future to shed more light on the 

 nature of these bodies. Let us hope that it will be possible to make 

 those alkaloids synthetically which have hitherto been found only in 

 nature. We must not forget in this connection that most of the natural 

 bases contain oxygen, which is not iound in the ammoniabases. Although 

 the discovery of the so-called ammonium bases, and Wurtz's beautiful 

 discovery of the behavior of oxide of ethylene to ammonia, have indi- 

 cated the way of preparing such oxygen bases artificially, there is nev- 

 ertheless a difficulty, which seems almost insurmountable. It is the 

 fact that most of the natural bases have optical properties, while we 

 cannot succeed with the aid of the above processes in preparing com- 

 pounds possessing similar properties from substances not originally 



