On the Connection between Chemical Constitution and Physiological Action

Abstract

AS regards Dr. Brunton's letter in last week's NATURE (p. 617), I would express myself as more than satisfied with the personal explanation, but Dr. Brunton has not noticed the most important point to which I wished to call attention, viz. that whatever may be the value of my experiments, as showing a connection between physiological action and chemical constitution, the researches of Crum Brown and Fraser have really no bearing on the subject, for the simple reason that they had no knowledge of the chemical constitution of the re-agents they employed. There is an old receipt for cooking a hare which commences “First catch your hare,” and in attempting to show the influence of change in chemical constitution on physiological action, it is well first to get a constitution. In the last edition of Watts's “Organic Chemistry” (1886) it is stated, “All these bases (the alkaloids), like the amines, are derivatives of ammonia, but their molecular structure is for the most part unknown.” Even as regards inorganic compounds, our knowledge of their chemical constitution is not the most definite, but I believe that the arrangement of the elements in isomorphous groups expresses most clearly the resemblance in the chemical constitution of their compounds.