Chemical Synthesis. 271 
“chemistry. Berthelot is not a vitalist, (see our last contribution) ;* he is 
convinced that, “we may undertake to form de novo, all the substances 
which have been developed from the origin of things, and to form them 
under the same conditions, by virtue of the same laws and by means of the 
same forces which nature employs for their formation.” Let us hasten to 
add a distinction upon which Berthelot properly insists and which it is 
necessary to recognize, between organs and the matter of which they are 
composed. “No chemist pretends to form in his laboratory, a leaf, a 
flower, a fruit or a muscle, these questions relate to physiology,” and it 
was by not observing this distinction that it was possible to form that school 
of medicine of which mention was made in my last communication—and 
~ 
The hydrocarbons thus d starti i - 
s prepared become the starting point for the syn 
thesis of alcohols; with marsh gas and oxygen we form methylic alcohol, 
- bi Olefiant gas and water—ordinary alcohol, &c. ) 
o The synthetic production of carbids of hydrogen and of alcohols con- 
ds by ordi 
fact that organic chemistry reposes 
"pon the same basis as mineral chemistry. ! 
s been said of the alcohols may also be said of various other 
of sage compounds, and among others of that new group, which 
lls the Phenols, and to which he has devoted a very interest- 
_ * This Journal, [2,] xxx, p. 412. 
+ See this Jour f2] wi 111 and p, 265. 
