380 MR C. G. WILLIAMS’ RESEARCHES ON 
ing to STRECKER’s experiments,* takes up only one equivalent of the alcohol 
radicals, and is therefore concluded with safety to be a nitryl base. Chinoline 
affords still more complete evidence of belonging to the same class, for not only 
is it incapable of taking up more than one equivalent, but, by the operation, it be- 
comes converted into a fixed alkaloid. Now, any process for making artificial 
quinine by means of the reactions mentioned above, would result in the forma- 
tion of an ammonium base, which must of necessity have a totally different con- 
stitution to quinine. It may be worth while, for a moment, to glance at the for- 
midable difficulties by which the artificial formation of such a base as quinine is 
surrounded. In the first place, in the present state of our information, it appears 
to consist of three radicals, united and having one equivalent of nitrogen and two 
of oxygen attached. Now, to acquire a knowledge of the constitution of these 
three radicals (one of which, in all probability, is oxidized) is a problem involving 
a new mode of research, the key to which appears, for the present, to be hidden. 
And even supposing the three radicals known, they have to be formed; and then 
to combine them with the addition of an equivalent of nitrogen, without destroy- 
ing the group, presents a task of no ordinary difficulty. 
I should not have entered upon this branch of the subject, had it not been for 
the manner in which the possibility of the formation of quinine, by the method 
above alluded to, has been accepted as a reality, which is the more remarkable 
from the manner in which Hormann cautioned chemists against placing too much 
reliance upon the success of the process. 
As it is my wish to correct, as far as my information will permit me, the 
erroneous views which have been formed of the relations between chinoline and 
quinine, I return to the supposed similarity between the action of heat upon qui- 
nine and the hydrated oxide of tetramethylammonium. This part of the subject 
is the more interesting, as it appears to have formed one of the links in the chain of 
reasoning, which led to a belief in the possibility of converting leukol into quinine, 
by the successive actions of iodide of methyl and oxide of silver. As the fixed 
base, hydrated oxide of tetramethylammonium, by heating yields trimethylamine, 
the difference being C, H, 0,, so quinine, less C, H, O, yields the old formula of 
leukol} thus,— 
C, H,, NO,—C, H, 0,=C, H, N 
—— —~—— 
Hydrated Oxide Trimethyl- 
of Tetramethyl- amine. 
ammonium. 
C,, H,, NO,—C, H, 0,=C,, H, N 
se ale es 
Quinine. Leukol. 
The identity in kind of the above equations presupposes two conditions, neither 
* Researches in Organic Chemistry, by Apoten Srrecxer. Compt. Rend. xxxi, 49. Chem. 
Soc., Quart. Jour. 1854, vol. vii., p. 278. 
t Quart. Jour, Chem. Soc., vol. iv., p. 328. 
