nitrogen, were grouped together in them was absolutely a thing unknown.
Chemists all admitted two things--first, that their constitution was
very complex, and, second, that the synthesis of any of the more
important medicinal alkaloids would be an eminently desirable thing to
effect from every point of view. Within the last five years, however,
quite considerable progress has been made in arriving at a clearer
understanding of these most important compounds, and I shall offer to
your attention this evening a brief statement of what has been done and
what seems likely to be accomplished in the near future.

It was early recognized that the alkaloids were complex amines or
ammonia derivatives. The more or less strongly marked basic character of
these bodies, the presence of nitrogen as an essential element, and,
above all, the analogy shown to ammonia in the way these bases united
with acids to form salts, not by replacement of the hydrogen of the
acid, but by direct addition of acid and base, pointed unmistakably to
this constitution. But with this granted, the simplest alkaloid
formulas, those of conine, C_{8}H_{17}N, and nicotine,
C_{10}H_{14}N_{2}, still showed that the amine molecule contained quite
complex groups of carbon and hydrogen atoms, and the great majority of
the alkaloids--the non-volatile ones--contained groups in which the
three elements, carbon, hydrogen, and oxygen, all entered. Hence the
difficulty in acquiring a knowledge of the molecular structure of those
alkaloids at all comparable with that attained in the case of other
organic compounds. Of course synthesis could not be applied until
analysis had revealed something of the molecular grouping of these
compounds, so the action of different classes of reagents was tried upon
the alkaloids. Before summarizing the results of this study of the
decomposition and alteration products of the alkaloids, a brief
reference to a related class of organic compounds will be of assistance