Technikatörténeti szemle 19. (1992)

KÖNYVISMERTETÉS - Papers of the First „MINERALKONTOR” International Conference on the History of Chemistry and Chemical Industry (Veszprém, 12-16 August, 1991)

sition of medicinal herbs had little to do with chemistry. Itt consisted in the application of various physical methods to separate the substances in a vegetable matter. For the most part, the process was carried out through various kinds cf distillation. The fractions obtained thus were called ..vegetable elements" since each fraction was a stable-structure element of all plants under investigation. Among vegetable elements were oils, camphors, resins, glues, tanning agent gluten etc. Early in the 19th century, distillation researches amounted to a lot and included one and a half thousand species of plants with tens of vegetable elements having been separated. Vegetable elements, much appreciated because of the said medicinal applications, remained substances of undefined structure. Herbs were analysed mainly in order to yield a single drug, the effectiveness of which was then tested upon animals. Interest in the chemical composition of plants was heightened by the discovery of the first alkaloids and their potent influence on human organisms. Then Sertiirner's publications on morphine became world famous and as a result phytochemistry began drawing chemists' attention to the study of unknown compounds. The discovery of alkaloids changed the existing views on the composition of plants. Vegetable elements ceased to be the object of study. They were replaced by organic compounds, isolated in pure form and then investigated in respect of their physical properties, subjected to chemical reactions. The discovery of morphine stimulated a rapid development of organic chemistry while raising the status of vegetable materials, which became the main source for the acquisition of organic compounds and inspired further studies related to them. This situation prevailed till the middle of the 19th century and began changing under the impact of the growing number of organic syntheses having been done. A major role was played in this process first by the synthesis of dyes and then by the synthesis of potent drugs.