displayed in devising methods for the isolation and purification of the
new compounds. Comparatively little has been added to our knowledge of
uric acid since the appearance of the paper of Liebig and Wöhler.

It would lead too far to attempt to give a complete list of the papers
which have appeared under the name of Wöhler alone. In 1828 he made the
remarkable discovery that when an aqueous solution of ammonium cyanate,
CNONH_{4}, is evaporated, the salt is completely transformed into urea,
which has the same percentage composition. It would be difficult to
exaggerate the importance of this discovery. That a substance like urea,
which up to that time had only been met with as a product of processes
which take place in the animal body, should be formed in the laboratory
out of inorganic compounds, appeared to chemists then to be little less
than a miracle. To-day such facts are among the commonest of chemistry.
The many brilliant syntheses of well-known and valuable organic
compounds which have been made during the past twenty years are results
of this discovery of Wöhler.

In 1823 he published a paper on secretion, in the urine, of substances
which are foreign to the animal organism, but which are brought into the
body. He discovered the transformation of neutral organic salts into
carbonates by the process of assimilation.

In 1832 he investigated the dimorphism of arsenious acid and antimony
oxide. In 1841 he made the discovery that dimorphous bodies have
different fusing points, according as they are in the crystallized or
amorphous condition.

Among the more remarkable of his investigations in inorganic chemistry
are those on methods for the preparation of potassium (1823); on