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So many substances once supposed to belong exclusively to living bodies, have now been formed artificially, that men of science scarcely question the conclusion that there are conditions under which, by yet another step of composition, quaternary compounds of lower types pass into those of highest types.
With us there are two sorts of feats; there are those that are performed by sleight of hand or by means of assistance. These are the juggler's tricks we show in the verandas and compounds of the white sahibs, and in the streets of the cities. There are others that are known only to the higher order among us, that we show only on rare occasions.
Ehrlich and Hata began to make chemical compounds of arsenic in the laboratory with chemical substances like the dyes. As the compounds grew more complex they were tested on animals and some of them found to have the qualities for which their inventors were searching. Some of them are even used at the present time in the treatment of certain diseases.
Even if it were assumed that at a remote time the earth's crust contained considerable quantities of radium compounds, it is certain that they would have completely disappeared long ago, had not compounds of radium been reproduced from other materials. Again, the most likely hypothesis is that compounds of radium are being produced from compounds of uranium.
Some of them struck me as singularly odd compounds of ardour and flatness; commencing in strong feeling, and concluding in the affected, wordy style that a schoolboy might use to a fancied, incorporeal sweetheart. Whether they satisfied Cathy I don't know; but they appeared very worthless trash to me.
He quotes a modern chemist who, discussing the probability of the environmental fitness of the earth for life being a mere chance process, remarks: "There is, in truth, not one chance in countless millions of millions that the many unique properties of carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, and especially of their stable compounds, water and carbonic acid, which chiefly make up the atmosphere of a new planet, should simultaneously occur in the three elements otherwise than through the operation of a natural law which somehow connects them together.
Each one of these blocks may be producing as many as one hundred different compounds at the same time, and each one of these compounds may, itself, involve two, three, or four different stages.
We get a glance here and there at obscure and infinite worlds extending beneath our distinct sensations. These are compounds and wholes.
He found, moreover, that among the organic compounds that could be made to phosphoresce under these conditions were nearly all the fixed and ethereal oils. With reference to the phosphorescence of animals, this observation is important, for it has been shown in a great many cases that a fatty substance forms the main constituent in their luminous organs.
Now, this want of comprehensive views of chemical reactions, their why and wherefore, was bad enough as it affected 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.
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