THE  AMERICAN 
JOURNAL  OF  PHARMACY. 
NOVEMBER,  1883, 
EECENT  STUDIES  ON  THE  CONSTITUTION  OF  THE 
ALKALOIDS. 
By  Samuel  P.  Sadtler,  Ph.D. 
Introductory  Lecture,  Course  of  1883-84,  Philadelphia  College  of  Pharmacy. 
The  sciences  of  to-day  present,  as  might  be  expected,  a  very  differ- 
ent aspect  from  the  same  branches  of  knowledge  as  they  appeared 
fifty  or  sixty  years  ago.  It  is  not  merely  that  the  mass  of  observations 
in  most  of  these  lines  of  study  has  enormously  increased  during  this 
interval.  Were  that  all,  the  change  could  hardly  be  considered  as  an 
unmixed  benefit,  because  of  the  increased  difficulty  of  assimilation  of 
this  additional  matter.  Many  would  be  the  contradictions  in  the 
observations  and  hopeless  would  be  the  task  of  bringing  order  out  of 
such  a  chaos.  The  advance  in  the  several  branches  of  knowledge  has 
been  largely  one  resulting  from  improved  methods  of  study,  rather 
than  one  following  simply  from  diligence  in  the  application  of  the  old 
ways. 
Let  us  turn  to  chemistry  for  our  illustration  of  this.  The  chemis- 
try of  the  last  century  and  the  early  decades  of  this  was  largely  a 
descriptive  science,  such  as  the  natural  history  branches,  zoology,  and 
botany  are  still  in  great  part.  Reasonably  exact  mineral  analyses 
were  made,  it  is  true,  but  the  laws  of  chemical  combination  and  the 
fundamental  conceptions  of  atoms  and  molecules  had  not  been  as  yet 
generally  established.  Now,  this  want  of  comprehensive  views  of 
chemical  reactions,  their  why  and  wherefore,  was  bad  enough  as  it 
afPected  the  study  of  inorganic  and  metallic  compounds,  but  what 
must  have  been  the  conditions  for  studying  the  complex  compounds  of 
carbon,  so  widely  spread  in  the  vegetable  and  animal  kingdoms. 
Their  number  is  so  enormous  that,  in  the  absence  of  any  established 
relationships,  not  much  more  than  a  mere  enumeration  was  possible 
for  the  student  of  this  branch  of  chemistry.  It  is  only  within  the 
last  twenty  years  that  chemists  have  attained  to  any  comprehensive 
views  at  all  in  the  domain  of  organic  chemistry.    It  has  been  found 
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