These compounds had a very surprising febrifuge action, without any
unpleasant after effects or local disturbances.

The most active workers in the field of synthetic formation of the
alkaloids have been Wischnegradsky, of St. Petersburg--who,
unfortunately for science, died at an untimely age in 1880--Königs and
Fischer, of Munich, and Ladenburg, of Kiel. The study of the
decomposition products of the cinchona alkaloids especially points quite
distinctly to the probable existence in quinine of a hydrogen addition
product of pyridine, in combination with a methyl-quinoline group. The
many experiments that are now being made to test this and other
questions that suggest themselves, will not long leave us in the dark.
Whether a practical commercial synthesis of quinine will follow is
another matter, but it is within the bounds of possibility, or perhaps
even of probability.

It must not be supposed that no syntheses of alkaloids have been
effected as yet. By heating butyl-aldehyde with alcoholic ammonia is
formed _paraconine_, an alkaloid isomeric with the natural conine, but
differing in physiological action. By the action of sodium upon pyridine
is produced a compound C_{10}H_{8}N_{2}, known as dipyridyl, and this,
under the influence of nascent hydrogen, takes up six atoms and becomes
_isonicotine_ C_{10}H_{14}N_{2}, a physiologically active alkaloid,
isomeric with the true nicotine. The formation of a series of alkaloids
under the name of _codeines_, by the substitution of other organic
radicals instead of methyl in the codeine reaction, has already been
alluded to. _Atropine_ can be formed by uniting tropine and tropic acid,
the two decomposition products already noted. The latter of these
products is already shown to be capable of synthetical formation, and
the other will no doubt be formed in the same way. The artificial