The chemical synthesis of vital products and the interrelations between organic compounds : Vol. 1 / by Raphael Meldola.

  • Meldola Raphael, 1849-1915.
Date:
1904
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The chemical synthesis of vital products and the interrelations between organic compounds : Vol. 1 / by Raphael Meldola. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh. The original may be consulted at the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh.

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    some compounds as compared with others. As long, however, as it is borne in mind that the importance of a compound is not measurable by the number of pages occupied by records of its mode of occurrence or of its synthetical production but little harm is likely to arise from this circumstance. It will be evident that such discrepancy is due to the fact that some compounds have lent themselves more readily to chemical investigation than others—that some have been found only in a limited number of animal or vegetable products, while others are widely distributed, or again, that some compounds are synthesisable from a few generators only, while others can be synthesised from a multiplicity of generators. Thus cymene [6] and benzyl alcohol [64] occupy the large amount of space that has been devoted to them because they happen to offer the first opportunity for dealing with the syntheses of benzene and toluene respectively, these hydrocarbons being required in many subsequent syntheses. Chemists will, of course, regard such cases in true perspective, although the caution herein conveyed may perhaps be necessary for physiologists who have no special knowledge of organic chemistry. Had benzene and toluene occurred as such in the free state in nature they would of course have been given place among the vital products and had their syntheses recorded in the usual way. In view of the improbability of the derivatives of such hydrocarbons as benzene or toluene being synthesised from the hydrocarbon by the living organism it has not been even considered justifiable to include their atomic complexes among the vital products. In fact, in the present state of knowledge, it would be impossible to draw up a satis- factory scale showing the importance to the vital economy of the various synthetical products—the more especially since, as already stated, the majority of these are of the nature of down-grade materials. The compounds of fundamental importance in vital chemistry, such as enzymes and albuminoid substances, have not yet been produced in the laboratory, so that chemical synthesis from the biochemical point of view may be said to have been hitherto confined to the lower orders of combination. Even the classification into the main groups of hydrocarbons, alcohols, &c., although convenient for practical purposes, is from the biocentric standpoint purely artificial, and must be taken rather as an expression of imperfect knowledge than of biochemical reality. When with the progress of discovery it becomes possible to construct schemes showing the genetic or evolutional inter-relations among vital products, then will the time be ripe for discussing on a scientific basis the order of importance of the various organic com- pounds in the cycle of vital operations. When our knowledge has reached this level it may be confidently asserted that the biochemical relationships will bo found to be quite different from those at present indicated by the ordinary chemical classification.
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