418 Observations on Organic Chemistry 



saving of labour and money, and in the more abundant crops of their 

 fields. 



Had a physician, who began his studies forty years ago, and who has 

 not followed during all this time the discoveries made and the experi- 

 ence attained, started these objections, I should not have stooped to 

 notice it. But do the analyses of fseces and urine, the first contribu- 

 tions to physiology which Berzelius made, — contributions which give 

 us about as much information on the origin of fseces and urine as 

 we might have derived from an analysis of garnet, — do these give Ber- 

 zelius a right to style the results of our labours " probability-theories," 

 because we connect other questions with them, and endeavour to derive 

 from them certain useful applications. 



I fully, and with pleasure, acknowledge the value which his invari- 

 ably exact and conscientious labours have had in their time, and which 

 they still possess, since they prepared the way for our present know- 

 ledge, and since without them we should have been obliged to go through 

 the same laborious investigations. But is it impossible to over-estimate 

 the labours of Berzelius ? Is the field of scientific inquiry to be limited 

 by the results of his investigations ? Far from it. No such dominion as 

 that exercised by Aristotle can now be conceded to any man. Nature 

 still offers illimitable mines for us to explore, and shall he whose la- 

 bours are rewarded with great discoveries feel no enthusiasm and ex- 

 press no gratification at his success ? 



For my own part, I confess that I felt my whole nervous system thril- 

 ling, as if pervaded by an electric current, when Wohler and myself 

 discovered that uric acid and all its products, by a simple supply of 

 oxygen, became resolved into carbonic acid and urea, thus showing that 

 there existed a connection between urea and uric acid, such as had ne- 

 ver before been dreamed of, in its infinite simplicity, — when our calcula- 

 tion proved that allantoin, the nitrogenous constituent of the urine of 

 the fsetus of the cow, contains the elements of uric acid and urea, and 

 when we succeeded in producing allantoin, with all its properties, from 

 uric acid. Though few words passed between us whilst engaged in 

 these investigations, how often have I seen the eyes of my friend glis- 

 tening with delight ! I felt the same thrilling sensation when, during 

 my investigation of Melam, and whilst following up the ultimate pro- 

 ducts of cyanogen, — the most simple of all organic radicals, — I found 

 that the atoms, instead of resolving themselves into more and more sim- 

 ple atoms, and finally into elementary atoms, re-arranged themselves 

 into far more complex groups than cyanogen ; and when, upon investi- 

 gating the sulphureous and nitrogenous constituents of plants, I found 



