Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882 — John Shaqi
Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882Various
Science
Scientific American Supplement, No. 365, December 30, 1882
Various
Science -- Periodicals
Of the papers included in the above list, the two which most attract
attention are those "On the Oil of Bitter Almonds" and "On Uric Acid."
In the former it was shown for the first time that in analogous carbon
compounds there are groups which remain unchanged, though the compounds
containing them may, in other respects, undergo a variety of changes.
This is the conception of radicals or residues as we use it at the
present day. It cannot be denied that this conception has done very much
to simplify the study of organic compounds. The full value of the
discovery was recognized at once by Berzelius, who, in a letter to the
authors of the paper, proposed that they should call their radical proin
or orthrin (the dawn of day), for the reason that the assumption of its
existence might be likened to the dawn of a new day in chemistry. The
study of this paper should form a part of the work of every advanced
student of chemistry. It is a model of all that is desirable in a
scientific memoir. The paper on uric acid is remarkable for the number
of interesting transformation products described in it, and the skill
displayed in devising methods for the isolation and purification of the
new compounds. Comparatively little has been added to our knowledge of
uric acid since the appearance of the paper of Liebig and Woehler.
It would lead too far to attempt to give a complete list of the papers
which have appeared under the name of Woehler alone. In 1828 he made the
remarkable discovery that when an aqueous solution of ammonium cyanate,
CNONH_{4}, is evaporated, the salt is completely transformed into urea,
which has the same percentage composition. It would be difficult to
exaggerate the importance of this discovery. That a substance like urea,
which up to that time had only been met with as a product of processes
which take place in the animal body, should be formed in the laboratory
out of inorganic compounds, appeared to chemists then to be little less
than a miracle. To-day such facts are among the commonest of chemistry.
The many brilliant syntheses of well-known and valuable organic
compounds which have been made during the past twenty years are results
of this discovery of Woehler.
In 1823 he published a paper on secretion, in the urine, of substances
which are foreign to the animal organism, but which are brought into the
body. He discovered the transformation of neutral organic salts into
carbonates by the process of assimilation.
In 1832 he investigated the dimorphism of arsenious acid and antimony
oxide. In 1841 he made the discovery that dimorphous bodies have
different fusing points, according as they are in the crystallized or
amorphous condition.
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