l. r. cooley. 57->(27) 



compounds. Among these are morphine, narcotine, and 

 a score of other bodies, to each of which analysis assigns 

 a distinct chemical formula. But morphine and the rest 

 are products of the decomposition of opium rather than 

 constituents of the poppy, from which they may be ex- 

 tracted. They can be extracted from the poppy only by 

 chemical means, while starch and sugar can be extracted 

 from plants by "physical processes ; and herein would 

 seem to be the clear and needful distinction between the 

 constituents of plants and the products of their chemical 

 decomposition. 



According to this definition the known compound 

 constituents of plants and animals are relatively few ; 

 the multitude of substances usually called organic are 

 the products of the chemical decomposition of plants 

 and animals, and are not to be regarded as their constit- 

 uents. 



These facts establish a most important classification of 

 those substances which are collectively called organic. 

 They are to be arranged in two distinct groups. 



1 st. Organized bodies. 



2d. The chemical products of their disorganization. 



The first class includes vegetables and animal bodies, 

 whether we regard the entire individual or any distinct 

 portion of it, such as the leaf, the twig, or. the tendril of 

 a- plant, or the hair, the claws or the tissue of an animal. 



The second class includes all substances which can 

 arise by tearing down the organic structure and rebuild- 

 ing from its elements by chemical means. 



Now these two classes of products are so unlike that 

 legitimate inferences concerning the first cannot be 

 drawn from experiments made with the last alone. The 

 texture of the last may or it may not be crystalline ; it 

 is never cellular, while that of the first is always cellular. 

 The last are purely chemical compounds ; the first are 

 never such. So that the difference between organized 

 bodies and the products obtained from them is far great- 

 er than the difference between chemical compounds and 

 merely mechanical mixtures. 



But the difference between chemical compounds and 

 the results of mechanical action is so great, that by com- 

 mon consent the peculiarities of these two classes of 

 bodies are attributed to different forces. Much more 



