ORGANIC CHEMISTRY 9 



physiology, and if the publication of this work should give an impetus 

 to further activity in this region one of its main objects will have been 

 achieved. 



The development of physiology along chemical lines is bound to 

 take place at an increasing rate with the progress of discovery, and in 

 the future the two sciences must necessarily become more and more 

 interdependent. If, some decades hence, a work on similar lines to 

 the present should ever be compiled, it may be anticipated with confi- 

 dence that the laboratory methods for synthesising vital products will 

 have approximated more closely to the physiological processes. It 

 may further be predicted with equal confidence that as greater chemical 

 mastery is acquired over the biochemical processes the number of 

 syntheses of vital products effected in the laboratory will go on increas- 

 ing at a much greater rate. Molecules of greater and greater com- 

 plexity will be built up independently of the animal or plant, and the 

 final triumph of synthetical chemistry may be expected to culminate 

 in the synthesis of those complex proteids which constitute such 

 a large proportion of the materials composing the living organism. 

 The complicated nitrogenous colloidal substances which play such an 

 important part in vital chemistry will at that time be no longer 

 subject to the reproach, now frequently aimed by organic chemists 

 who recognise nothing that is not crystalline, of being ' messes,' but 

 will take rank among the definite synthesised vital products. In the 

 meantime the recasting of the data of organic chemistry in this 

 biological mould may help to convince physiologists that considerable 

 progress has been made by chemists towards placing their science 

 on a more exact foundation, since all the vital products registered in 

 this work are perfectly definite and well-characterised compounds of 

 known chemical constitution. 



IV. CHEMICAL SYNTHESIS FROM THE BIOCENTRIC 



STANDPOINT 



The consideration of the achievements of synthetical chemistry 

 from the present point of view has necessarily resulted in a mode of 

 treatment differing essentially from that adopted in the current 

 treatises. The term ' synthesis ' as used in organic chemistry is 

 generally assumed, if not explicitly stated, to mean the building up 

 of a carbon compound from compounds of lesser complexity. If the 

 simpler molecule is capable of being produced directly from its 

 elements the synthesis is said to be complete. It is evident, however, 

 that in the living organism two kinds of chemical change are going 

 on an up-grade or building-up process from simpler to more complex 

 molecules, and a down-grade or breaking-down process from complex 

 to simpler molecules. From the chemical as well as from the physio- 

 logical point of view it appears that a large proportion, if not a large 





UNIVERSITY 



