ORGANIC BASES. 199 



possessing them. The discovery of methods for the artificial or syn- 

 thetic preparation of the alkaloids would not only be of high scientific 

 interest, but it would also greatly advance our material interests, for 

 there is scarcely another group of bodies of such manifold uses as the 

 organic bases. 



Many of these alkaloids play an important part in the arts, others are 

 known as the active principles of stimulating articles of food, while the 

 great number of them are valuable as medicines. Many of them are ex- 

 tremely violent poisons, and have acquired an unenviable reputation 

 from cases in which they have been employed. 



Poisoning by means of vegetable bases is rendered doubly dangerous, 

 because it is often difficult to prove with certainty the presence of the 

 poison in the corpse or the secretions by chemical analysis, while the 

 presence of mineral poisons can generally be detected with ready cer- 

 tainty. The reason of this is not difficult to understand. We are but 

 imperfectly acquainted with the properties of the natural alkaloids. 

 They resemble each other very much. In cases of poisoning, they are 

 mixed up in the stomach or other parts of the body with many other or- 

 ganic substances, all containing carbon and having certain properties in 

 common with them. These organic substances are of course more akin 

 to the vegetable bases than to inorganic substances, such as the. com- 

 pounds of arsenic, which are not found in anj' part of the human body. 

 Metals are present only in insignificant quantities, and those which are 

 present are not at all similar to arsenic. Now the organic bodies pres- 

 ent all contain nitrogen and may have basic properties, both character- 

 istics of alkaloids. It is obvious that the detection and separation of 

 very similar bodies are much more difficult than the separation of dis- 

 similar ones, where the detection of a single property often suffices to 

 prove their presence with certainty. 



If we consider furthermore that the alkaloids are very easily decom- 

 posed, and that in legal chemical investigations the bodies in which they 

 are to be sought for are generally in a state of putrefaction, i. e., of contin- 

 ual active change, we will understand how impossible it is frequently 

 for chemists to separate the poisons in a state of purity from parts of 

 the body and to prove their presence with certainty. It is indeed some- 

 times possible to inject the substances which in cases of poisoning 

 must contain the vegetable base, into the blood of living animals or to 

 mix it with their food, and then to judge, from the physiological effects 

 on the animals, which poison was present. The changes produced by 

 certain alkaloids on the beating of the heart, on the general action of the 

 muscles, and on the nervous system, are frequently so characteristic that 

 we can judge of the presence of one or other alkaloid with as much cer- 

 tainty from these effects as from pure chemical reactions. Such proofs, 

 however, htive not the full force of evidence in court, for in such cases 

 the separation of the pure poison must always be the chief aim of the 

 chemist. 



Dangerous as our organic bases may become in the hands of the 



