ABSTRACT
While biological research was yielding the abundant results which have been described above, it was subject to very important influences from other natural sciences in two special spheres. We have described how, thanks to Berzelius, chemistry had extended its inquiries to the sphere of living beings, and how an immense number of substances of quite a peculiar kind were analysed and described. These substances, which nowhere exist in inanimate nature and might consequently appear exclusively to have "life" to thank for their origin, were called organic associations; their existence was considered to be one of the most palpable proofs that life itself was in its essence utterly distinct from the phenomena that take place in inanimate nature, and even independent of the chemical and physical laws that govern lifeless matter. Organic chemistry thus became, the more it developed, the strongest support for the theory of a special life-force as the essential precondition for all that takes place in animate nature. The theories maintaining this force therefore gained ground amongst an ever-increasing number of biologists; as we have seen, Johannes Müller embraced a theory of this nature, as also did many of his school, and even a scientist like Magendie, opposed to speculation though he was, could not help acknowledging the invalidity of the ordinary chemical laws when applied to living nature. It was in these circumstances that Wöhler made his great contribution to natural science.
