ABSTRACT
In 1828 the German chemist F Wohler synthesized a natural product, urea, and destroyed the tenet that a 'life force' had to be involved in the making of natural products. The next 15 years saw a flurry of argument over the constitution and structures of organic compounds. The prominent Swiss chemist J J Berzelius advanced the doctrine of dualism, which held that every compound was formed by the union of two radicals, single or compound, that had opposite electrical polarities. If an electronegative radical (e.g. chlorine) could take the place of an electropositive one (e.g. hydrogen), in one of the two parts of a compound, the nature and polarity of that part would be drastically altered, arid the product of such a substitution therefore could not be of the same chemical type as the original compound.
