Morphine Dreams: Auguste Laurent and the Active Principles of Organised Matter

Abstract

Auguste Laurent began his work on morphine, nicotine, and other intoxicating alkaloids hopeful that he could reproduce them artificially from the byproducts of coal tar. After successfully creating artificial alkaloids, he collaborated with Jean-Baptiste Biot to determine that while plant-derived alkaloids were optically active, his artificial ones were not, further establishing a link between the action of molecules upon polarised light and their action upon the animal economy, and a firm line between natural and artificial products later taken up in the work of Louis Pasteur. This paper places this work in the context of a long tradition in which chemists, naturalists, and pharmacists variously used “active principles” to refer both to the particular living nature of substances, and to their ability to act on the human body.

Notes

1 Auguste Laurent to Charles Gerhardt, 6 March 1845, in Correspondance de Charles Gerhardt, ed. Marc Tiffeneau (Paris: Masson, 1918), vol. 1, 27.

2 Laurent to Gerhardt, 6 March 1845, in Tiffeneau, Correspondance, vol. 1, 28.

3 John E. Lesch, “Conceptual Change in an Empirical Science: The Discovery of the First Alkaloids,” HSPS 11 no. 2 (1981): 305–328; Catherine Jackson, “Synthetical Experiments and Alkaloid Analogues: Liebig, Hofmann and the Origins of Organic Synthesis,” Historical Studies in the Natural Sciences 44 (2014): 319–63.

4 Benjamin Breen, The Age of Intoxication: Origins of the Global Drug Trade (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2019), 7.

5 Marika Blondel-Mégrelis, “Auguste Laurent et les alcaloïdes,” Revue d'Histoire de la Pharmacie 331(2001): 303–14.

6 Blondel-Mégrelis, “Auguste Laurent et les alcaloïdes,” 303.

7 Examples of recent works emphasizing the role of intoxicants in the rise of global trade include Phil Withington, “Intoxicants and the Invention of ‘Consumption,’” The Economic History Review 73, no. 2 (2019), 384-408; Phil Withington, “Introduction: Cultures of Intoxication,” Past & Present, 222, no. 9 (2014): 9-34, Emma Spary, “Knowing and Selling Exotic Drugs in Paris c. 1700” (presentation before the Royal College of Physicians of Edinburgh, 13 April 2016); Patrick Wallis, “Exotic Drugs and English Medicine: England's Drug Trade, c. 1550–c. 1800,” Social History of Medicine 5, no. 1 (2012): 20–46; Lissa Roberts and Simon Werritt, eds., Compound Histories: Materials, Governance and Production, 1760–1840 (Leiden: Brill, 2017); Breen, Intoxication.

8 John Hedley Brooke, “Overtaking Nature? The Changing Scope of Organic Chemistry in the Nineteenth Century,” in The Artificial and the Natural: An Evolving Polarity, ed. Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent and William R. Newman (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2007), 275–292; Alan Rocke, Nationalizing Science: Adolphe Wurtz and the Battle for French Chemistry (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001), Catherine Jackson, “The ‘Wonderful Properties of Glass’: Liebig’s Kaliapparat and the Practice of Chemistry in Glass,” Isis 106 (2015): 43–69; Bernadette Bensaude-Vincent, “Changing Images of Chemistry,” in The Changing Image of the Sciences, ed. I. H. Stamhuis, T. Koetsier, C. De Pater, and A. Van Helden (New York: Springer Verlag, 2002), 29–41.

9 André Pichot, Histoire de la notion de vie (Paris: Gallimard, 1993); H. Cuny, Pasteur et le mystère de la vie (Paris: Seghers, 1963); Peter Ramberg, Chemical Structure, Spatial Arrangement: The Early Development of Stereochemistry, 1874–1914 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003); Evelyn Fox Keller, “Active Matter, Then and Now,” History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences 38 (2016), 1–11; Graeme K. Hunter, Vital Forces: The Discovery of the Molecular Basis of Life (London: Academic Press, 2000).

10 Antoine Baumé, Chymie expérimentale et raisonnée (Paris: Didot, 1773), 41; see also Bruce Moran, Distilling Knowledge: Alchemy, Chemistry, and the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009), 119.

11 Seth Rasmussen, The Quest for Aqua Vitae: The History and Chemistry of Alcohol from Antiquity to the Middle Ages (New York: Springer, 2014), 92.

12 John Henry, “Occult Qualities and the Experimental Philosophy: Active Principles in Pre-Newtonian Matter Theory,” History of Science 24 (1986): 335-81; Fox Keller, “Active Matter,” 2.

13 Mary Terrall, “Material Impressions: Conception, Sensibility, and Inheritance,” in Vital Matters: Eighteenth-century Views of Conception, Life, and Death, ed. Helen Deutsch and Mary Terrall (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2012); Jessica Riskin, The Restless Clock: A History of the Centuries-long Argument over What Makes Living Things Tick (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2016).

14 Ursula Klein and Wolfgang Lefèvre, Materials in Eighteenth-Century Science: A Historical Ontology (Cambridge, MA: The MIT Press, 2007), 20.

15 Klein and Lefèvre, Materials, 87.

16 Lavoisier, Traité élémentaire de chimie (Paris: Chez Cuchet, 1789), 140, cited in Frederic Lawrence Holmes, Lavoisier and the Chemistry of Life: An Exploration of Scientific Creativity (Madison: The University of Wisconsin Press, 1985), 261; See also Ursula Klein, “Contexts and Limits of Lavoisier’s Analytical Plant Chemistry: Plant Materials and their Classification,” Ambix 52 (2005): 107–57.

17 Holmes, Lavoisier, 292.

18 Holmes, Lavoisier, 404.

19 Jean-Antoine Chaptal, Traité théorique et pratique sur la culture de la vigne, avec l'art de faire le vin, les eaux-de-vie, esprit de vin, vinaigres simples et composés, 2 vols (Paris: Chez Delalain 1801). J. B. Gough, “Winecraft and Chemistry in 18th Century France: Chaptal and the Invention of Chaptalization,” Technology and Culture 39, no. 1 (Jan 1998); Harry Paul, Science, Vine and Wine in Modern France (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002).

20 Harry Paul points out that this position is ambiguous in the first edition and only clarified in the second edition. Paul, Science, Vine and Wine, 127.

21 Jean-Antoine Chaptal, L’art de faire du vin (Paris: Deterville, 1807), 311.

22 Holmes, Lavoisier.

23 Jonathan Simon, Chemistry, Pharmacy and Revolution in France, 1777–1809 (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2005).

24 Antoine-François Fourcroy, “Observations sur l’état actual de l’analyse végétale,” Journal de la société des pharmaciens de paris (1799).

25 Antoine-François Fourcroy, “Analyse du Quinquina de Saint-Domingue pour servir des matières sèches en géneral,” Annales de chimie et de physique 8 (1791): 113–83, on 140 and 158. See also Simon, Chemistry, Pharmacy and Revolution, 155.

26 Auguste Laurent, “Sur la composition des alcalis organiques et de quelques combinaisons azotées,” Annales de chimie et de physique 19 (1847): 359–77.

27 For biographical information on Laurent, see Jean Jacques, “Liste chronologique des publications d’Auguste Laurent,” Archives de l’Institut Grand-Ducal de Luxembourg 22 (1955); Robert Stumper, “La vie et l’oeuvre d'un grand chimiste, pionnier de la doctrine atomique: Augustin Laurent, 1807-1853,” Archives de l'Institut grand-ducal de Luxembourg, section des sciences 20 (1951-1953), 47–93; Clara deMilt, “Auguste Laurent, Founder of Modern Organic Chemistry,” Chymia 4 (1953): 85–114; Édouard Grimaux, “Auguste Laurent,” Revue scientifique 4, no. 6 (1896), 203–209; Marya Eunice Novitski, August Laurent and the Prehistory of Valence (Chur, Switzerland, and Philadelphia: Harwood Academic, 1992); Marika Blondel-Mégrelis, Dire les Choses - Auguste Laurent et la méthode chimique (Paris: J. Vrin, 1996).

28 Laurent to Gerhardt, 24 February 1845, in Tiffeneau, Correspondance, vol. 1, 18.

29 Stumper, “La vie et l'oeuvre d'un grand chimiste,” 56.

30 J. R. Partington, A History of Chemistry (New York : Macmillan, 1962), 382; Auguste Laurent, “Sur le phényle et ses dérivés,” Annales de chimie et de physique [3] 3 (1841), 198.

31 Auguste Laurent, “Sur la chlorophénise et les acides chlorophénisique et chlorophénèsique, ” Annales de chimie et de physique [2] 63 (1836), 32.

32 Partington, A History, 382.

33 Auguste Laurent, “Mémoire sur le phényle et ses dérivés,” Annales de chimie et de physique 3, no. 3 (1841): 195–228, on 198.

34 Laurent, “Mémoire sur le phényle,” 198.

35 Laurent to Gerhardt, 5 January 1846, in Tiffeneau, Correspondance, vol. 1, 121n28.

36 Auguste Laurent, “Sur un nouvel alcali organique, l’amarine,” Comptes rendus hebdomadaires des séances de l'Académie des sciences (hereafter CRAS) 19 (1844): 353–5, on 353.

37 Auguste Laurent, “Sur un nouveau mode de formation de l’aniline,” CRAS 17 (1843): 1366–8.

38 Catherine E. McKinley, Indigo: In Search of the Colour that Seduced the World (London: Bloomsbury, 2012), 2.

39 Laurent “Sur un nouveau mode,” 1368.

40 Auguste Laurent, “Mémoire sur la composition des alcalis organiques et de quelques combinaisons azotées,” Annales de chimie et de physique 3, no. 19 (1847): 359–77.

41 Laurent, “Sur un nouvel alcali organique.”

42 Jackson, “Synthetical Experiments.”

43 Charles Coulston Gillispie, Science and Polity in France: The Revolutionary and Napoleonic Years (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2004); Jed Buchwald, The Rise of the Wave Theory of Light (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989); Theresa Levitt, The Shadow of Enlightenment: Optical and Political Transparency in France, 1789–1848 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009).

44 Jean-Baptiste Biot, “Mémoire sur les rotations que certaines substances impriment aux axes de polarisation des rayons lumineux, Lu le 22 septembre 1818,” Mémoires de l'Académie des sciences de l'Institut de France 2 (1819): 41–136.

45 Jean-Baptiste Biot, “Mémoire sur la polarisation circulaire et sur ses applications à la Chimie organique, Lu le 5 novembre 1832,” Mémoires de l'Académie des sciences de l'Institut de France 13 (1835): 39–176, on 116.

46 Tartaric acid became something of an obsession for Biot, as it behaved in ways that no other substance did. He found that the optical activity varied proportionally with the proportion by weight of water contained in the solution. If the temperature changed, these relations changed. Biot determined the precise laws governing these, convinced that they could help unlock the key of the substance’s organization. Biot, “Mémoire sur la polarisation circulaire.”

47 Biot, “ Mémoire sur la polarisation circulaire.”

48 Marcel Chaigneau, Jean-Baptiste Dumas, sa vie, son ouevre (Paris: Guy Le Prat, 1984), 107.

49 M. Arezula, “Extrait d’une dissertation de M. Proust Qui a pour titre, Résultat des expériences faites sur le camphre de Murcie,” Annales de chimie et de physique 4 (1790): 179–209.

50 Rocke, Nationalizing Science; Jackson, “The ‘Wonderful Properties of Glass.’”

51 Jean-Baptiste Dumas, “Mémoire sur les Substance végétales qui se rapprochent du Camphre, et sur quelques huiles essentielles,” Annales de chimie et de physique 50 (1832): 225–40, on 228; Jean-Baptiste Dumas, “Sur les camphres artificiels des essences de Térébenthine et de Citron,” Annales de chimie et de physique 52 (1833), 400–10.

52 Biot, “ Mémoire sur la polarisation circulaire.” 154.

53 Jean-Baptiste Dumas, “Rapport sur un Mémoire de M. Payen, relatif à l’analyse élémentaire de l’amidon et à celle de la dextrine,” CRAS 5 (1837): 898-905, 898.

54 Archives of the College de France, Cxii Biot 16.

55 Apollinaire Bouchardat, “Sur les propriétés optiques des alcalis végétaux,” Annales de chimie et de physique 9 (1843): 213.

56 Jean-Baptiste Biot, “Note sur un travail de M. Bouchardat, relative aux alcalis végétaux,” CRAS 17 (1843): 721–4.

57 Auguste Laurent, “Action de quelques bases organiques sur la lumière polarisée,” CRAS 19 (1844): 925–27.

58 Laurent, “Action de quelques bases organiques,” 927.

59 Auguste Laurent, “Action des alcalis chlorés sur la lumière polarisée et sur l’économie animale,” CRAS 24 (1847): 219–27.

60 Laurent to Gerhardt, 16 November 1845, in Tiffeneau, Correspondance, vol. 1, 111

61 Quoted in Stumper, “La vie et l'oeuvre d'un grand chimiste,” 62.

62 Pasteur to Chappuis, quoted in René Vallery-Radot, The Life of Pasteur, trans. R. L. Devonshire (New York: Maclure, Philips, 1902), vol. 1, 44.

63 Vallery-Radot, The Life of Pasteur, 44.

64 Laurent to Gerhardt, Paris, 28 October 1847, in Tiffeneau, Correspondance, vol. 1, 247.

65 Laurent to Gerhardt, Paris, 6 October 1847, in Tiffeneau, Correspondance, vol. 1, 245.

66 Gerald Geison, The Private Science of Louis Pasteur (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1995); Peter Ramberg, Chemical Structure, Spatial Arrangement: The Early History of Stereochemistry, 1874-1914, online ed. (Routledge, 2017); Dorian B. Kottler, “Louis Pasteur and Molecular Disymmetry, 1844–1857,” Studies in History of Biology 2 (1978): 57–98.

67 Eilhard Mitscherlich, “Über die Krystallisation der Salze,” Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenschaften (1818-1819): 427–37; Auguste Laurent and Guy-Adolphe Arrault, “Fabrication du Smalt ou bleu de Cobalt à Querbach, en Basse-Silésie,” Annales de l’industrie française et étrangère 5 (1830): 474–503.

68 Hans-Werner Schütt, Eilhard Mitscherlich: Prince of Prussian Chemistry, trans. William E. Russey (Washington, D. C.: American Chemical Society, 1997), 110.

69 Maurice Crosland, Gay-Lussac, Scientist and Bourgeois (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978), 135.

70 Jean-Baptiste Biot, “Communication d’une note de M. Mitscherlich,” CRAS 19 (1844): 719–25, on 721.

71 Biot, “Communication d’une note de M. Mitscherlich,” 719.

72 Louis Pasteur, “La Dissymétrie moléculaire,” in Œuvres de Pasteur, ed. René Vallery-Radot,(Paris: Masson et Cie, 1922), vol. 1, 369-380, on 370-71.

73 Pasteur, “La Dissymétrie moléculaire,” 371.

74 Vallery-Radot, The Life of Pasteur, 51.

75 Vallery-Radot, The Life of Pasteur, 54.

76 Louis Pasteur, “Mémoire sur la fermentation alcoolique,” Annales de chimie et de physique 58 (1860): 323–426, on 359.

77 Louis Pasteur, “Nouvelles recherches sur les relations qui peuvent exister entre la forme crystalline, la composition chimique et le phénomène rotatoire moléculaire,” CRAS 35 (1852): 176–83.

78 Louis Pasteur, “Recherches sur les alcaloïdes des quinquina,” CRAS 37 (1853): 110–4.

79 Louis Pasteur, “La dissymétrie moléculaire, conférence faite à la société chimique de Paris le 22 décembre 1883,” in Vallery-Radot, Œuvres de Pasteur, vol. 1, 376.

80 Pasteur, “La dissymétrie moléculaire, conférence faite à la société chimique,” 376.

81 Geison, The Private Science of Louis Pasteur, 138.

82 Pasteur, “La dissymétrie moléculaire, conférence faite à la société chimique,” 373.

83 Pasteur, “Réponses aux remarques de MM. Wyrouboff et Jungfleisch sur La dissymétrie moléculaire,” in Vallery-Radot, Œuvres de Pasteur, vol. 1, 386.

84 Geison, The Private Science of Louis Pasteur.

85 Pasteur, Pasteur, “La dissymétrie moléculaire, conférence faite à la société chimique,” 369.

86 See, for a canonical example, John Farley and Gerald Geison, “Science, Politics and Spontaneous Generation in Nineteenth-century France: The Pasteur-Pouchet Debate,” Bulletin of the History of Medicine 48 (1974): 161–98.

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Theresa Levitt

Theresa Levitt is a Professor of History at the University of Mississippi. She is the author of two books, A Short Bright Flash: Augustin Fresnel and the Invention of the Modern Lighthouse and The Shadow of Enlightenment: Optical and Political Transparency in France, 1789–1848. She is currently working on a book about Auguste Laurent, the perfume industry, and the transition from natural to synthetic products.