Notes on Organic Chemistry. 433 



Chemistry in particular, and science in general, is greatly- 

 indebted to M. Berthelot for the successful zeal with which he 

 has imitated the so-called "vital force," and reconstructed 

 edifices which analytical chemistry had destroyed. The citation 

 from Grerhardt dates, he tells us, fifteen years back, but " since 

 ten years a great change has taken place ; ideas of the con- 

 stitution of organic matter and of synthesis are profoundly mo- 

 dified ; discoveries have been made which have left few chemists 

 who are notpreoccupied with questions of synthesis.*" Inanother 

 passage, M. Berthelot observes that " Synthesis conducts us 

 to the demonstration of this capital truth, that the chemical 

 forces which rule organic matter are really, and without reserva- 

 tion, the same as those which rule mineral matter. This result 

 was reached when it was proved that the last forces gave 

 rise to the same effects as the first, and reproduced the same 

 combinations — a fundamental conception which analysis was 

 able to suggest, but which it was incompetent to prove." f 



The microscopist will not be able to appreciate the pheno- 

 mena of growth and decay which his instrument reveals, if he does 

 not acquaint himself with the elements of organic chemistry. 

 No creature can live and grow unless provided with materials 

 for food and respiration. Plants have their food as well as 

 animals, and their respiration also. The vital changes which 

 occur in animals lead them to give out materials, such as 

 nitrogenous compounds and carbonic acid, which are useful 

 and necessary to plants ; while the plant (though by no 

 means exclusively) gives out oxygen, and absorbs carbonic 

 acid. 



The oxydation of organic substances is neither more nor 

 less than burning them. We cannot render waste matter 

 innoxious in any better way than by burning it, and this 

 is effected for us under the influence of light and heat by the 

 myriads of minute organisms that take possession of dead 

 matter, and direct the mode of its decay. The microscopic 

 plants are thus essential to the great scheme of things ; and 

 objects so small and so simple as the vibrion family, determine 

 changes and produce results which are essential to the existence 

 ■of man himself upon the globe. 



By varying the proportions in which two substances com- 

 bine, and probably also by varying the pattern in which their 

 atoms are arranged, very different results may be obtained. 

 M. Berthelot observes in the work already cited J that "the 

 substances (in the organic world) which only contains two 



* Leqons Generates de Synthese en Chimie Organique Professes en 1864, au 

 College de France, par M. Berthelot. Paris : Grauthier- Yillars. Page 15. 

 t Page 17. 

 t ?age 21. 



