Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 42.djvu/59

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F it is true that crude or dead matter and living matter are not separated by any impassable gulf, it seems reasonable to think that the resources of our laboratories, of which the power is increasing every day, will be able at some time to prove themselves capable of producing living matter from mineral. I purpose to discuss the legitimacy of this hope, taking into the account the results that have been already obtained, and appreciating the value of the objections that are opposed to it. It has long been supposed that the very complex substances that are the basis of living beings (plants and animals) could not be reproduced in laboratories by the simple combination of the forces which the chemist employs, and which reside in dead matter. "Vital force only," Gerhardt has said, "operates by synthesis and reconstructs the edifice that has been beaten down by chemical forces"; and Pasteur says, "We have not yet realized the production of a dissymmetrical body by the aid of compounds that are not so." These words of two illustrious chemists have met in modern labors a denial which is becoming every day more emphatic. Chemistry has entered upon the road of the synthesis of organic compounds, and has recently made a remarkable step, and has gone beyond a point which had been considered impassable.

Wöhler made the first synthesis in 1828, and obtained urea through the reaction of ammonia on cyanic acid. By taking simple bodies as the point of departure, we have been able to reproduce the carburets of hydrogen and formic acid; from the carburets we have gone up to the alcohols and to all their derivatives. Berthelot produced alcohol by bringing together the gaseous body ethylene and sulphuric acid. The product of this reaction, decomposed by water, furnished alcohol. Wurtz obtained the synthesis of alcohol in another way. He subjected aldehyde to the action of nascent hydrogen, and alcohol was produced by the direct fixation of the hydrogen. As my colleague, M. Oeschner de Coninck, has remarked to me, this synthesis is of particular interest from the biological point of view, with which I am especially occupied; for everything tends to prove that this is the way alcohol is produced in plants. We are then in the presence of a case where the forces of the laboratory follow, for a given end, the same course as the forces of living Nature.

A considerable number of alkaloids of vegetable origin have been obtained directly by synthesis. M. Oeschner de Coninck,