CHEMISTRY SINCE TIME OF DALTON 



a few familiar elements, under the operation of uni- 

 versal chemical laws. The chimera " vital force" 

 could no longer gain recognition in the domain of 

 chemistry. 



Now a wave of interest in organic chemistry swept 

 over the chemical world, and soon the stud)'- of carbon 

 compounds became as much the fashion as electro- 

 chemistry had been in the preceding generation. 



Foremost among the workers who rendered this 

 epoch of organic chemistry memorable were Justus 

 Liebig in Germany and Jean Baptiste Andre* Dumas in 

 France, and their respective pupils, Charles Frederic 

 Gerhardt and Augustus Laurent. Wohler, too, must 

 be named in the same breath, as also must Louis Pas- 

 teur, who, though somewhat younger than the others, 

 came upon the scene in time to take chief part in the 

 most important of the controversies that grew out of 

 their labors. 



Several years earlier than this the way had been 

 paved for the study of organic substances by Gay-Lus- 

 sac's discovery, made in 1815, that a certain compound 

 of carbon and nitrogen, which he named cyanogen, has 

 a peculiar degree of stability which enables it to retain 

 its identity and enter into chemical relations after the 

 manner of a simple body. A year later Ampere dis- 

 covered that nitrogen and hydrogen, when combined 

 in certain proportions to form what he called ammo- 

 nium, have the same property. Berzelius had seized 

 upon this discovery of the compound radical, as it was 

 called, because it seemed to lend aid to his dualistic 

 theory. He conceived the idea that all organic com- 

 pounds are binary unions of various compound radicals 

 TOI.. nr. s 55 



