SYNTHETIC CHEMISTRY 



hard to break up. The work was long and painful. 

 Even to this day some of the more complex bodies 

 the ferments, and the substances which form the 

 physical basis of life, the various kinds of proto- 

 plasm are known only in an approximate way. 

 But this is known, that the whole realm of organic 

 things contains practically only four substances: 

 carbon, such as we find in coal that is the base 

 of them all; the elements of water, oxygen and 

 hydrogen; and the nitrogen of the air. 



The myriad and bewildering variety of organic 

 products, the substances of our bodies, the odor 

 of the rose, the leaves of the forest, the appeasing 

 delicacy of fruits, seem no more than these four 

 substances put together in differing ways. Nay, 

 analysis shows that the most astonishing variety 

 of things can be made Up of identically the same 

 number of atoms of each element. 



Starch and cotton, to take a striking example, 

 arc made up of the same proportions of the four 

 organic elements. So with fruit-sugar and the 

 acid which makes milk sour the one is sweet, the 

 other bitter; one a liquid, the other a solid; one 

 forms beautiful crystals, the other none. Yet 

 here again the same number of little particles of 

 the same simple substances unite to form the 

 sugar or the acid; the only difference is the way 

 they come together, how they are grouped. 



