88 PARTICULAR CONSIDER ATIONS ON THE 



Now the chemist, by the association of tv\o parts oxygen, 

 four hydrogen, two carbon, and two nitrogen, can make 

 urea. Alantoin has also been produced artificially. Two 

 of the proximate principles being realizable by human 

 care, the possibility of realizing or forming all its estab- 

 lished. Thus the chemist may be said to have it in his 

 power to realize the first step in organization.* Indeed, 

 it is fully acknowledged by Dr. Daubeny, that in the com- 

 binations forming the proximate principles there is no 

 chemical peculiarity. «« It is now certain," he says, " that 

 the same simple laws of composition pervade the whole 

 creation ; and that, if the organic chemist only takes the 

 requisite precautions to avoid resolving into their ultimate 

 elements the proximate principles upon which he ope- 

 rates, the results of his analysis will show that they are 

 combined precisely according to the same plan as the 

 elements of mineral bodies are known to be."f A parti- 

 cular fact is here worthy of attention. " The conversion 

 of fecula into sugar, as one of the ordinary processes oi 

 vegetable economy, is effected by the production of a se- 

 cretion termed diastose, which occasions both the rupture 

 of the starch vesicles, and the change of their contained 

 gum into sugar. This diastose maybe separately obtained 

 by the chemist, and it acts as effectually in his laboratory 

 as in the vegetable organization. He can also imitate its 

 effects by other chemical agents.":]: The writer quoted 

 below adds, No reasonable ground has yet been adduced 

 for supposing that, if we had the power of bringing toge- 

 ther the elements of any organic compound, in their re- 

 quisite states and proportions, the result would be any 

 other than that which is found in the living body." 



It is much to know the elements out of which organic 

 bodies are composed. It is something more to know their 

 first combinations and that these are simply chemical. How 

 these combinations are associated in the structure of liv- 

 ing bodies is the next inquiry, but it is one to which as 

 yet no satisfactory answer can be given. The investiga- 

 tion of the minutiae of organic structure by the microscope 



* Fatty matter has also been formed in the laboratory. The pro 

 cess consited in passing a mixture of carbonic acid, pure hydrogen 

 and carburetted hydrogen in the proportion of one measure of the 

 first, twenty of the second, and ten of the third, through a red-hot 

 tube. 



t Supplement to the Atomic Theory. 



j Carpenter on Life • Todd's Cyclopaedia of Physiology. 



