1805

Sertűrner isolates from opium a “principle” that, in animal experiments had marked narcotic properties, and which he named principium somniferum. He described it as having an “almost alkaline-like character,” but did not positively state that it was an alkali, reserving the problem for further investigation (Lesch II, 312-13) . . . Only Sertűrner . . was willing to suggest that the ‘almost alkali-like character’ of his principle was intrinsic. In retrospect this appears a breakthrough, and it is sometimes labelled the discovery of morphine. Yet Sertűrner’s results were largely ignored between 1805 and 1817 . . . there were good chemical reasons for suspecting or rejecting Sertűrner’s conclusion” (Lesch, 315-16). Whereas Sertűrner emphasized the alkaline nature of morphine in his paper of 1817, the French chemists Gay-Lussac and Robiquet, reacting to his paper, stressed that morphine was an organic base with a family resemblance to other physiologically active organic substances. Then, in 1818, the French pharmacists Pettetier and Caventou announced the isolation of the active principle of the strychnos family of plant poisons, a principle they could show to be a salifiable organic base. They placed strychnine with morphine as members of a new class of salifiable organic bases (321-23). Cf. Parascandola (80-81)’s simplified account: Field of alkaloid chemistry opens up when German pharmacist Friedrich Sertűrner isolates morphine and recognizes it as an alkaloid, though it was later that French chemist Joseph Gay-Lussac and pharmacist Pierre Robiquet appreciated that morphine was just the first of a whole new class of organic bases (morphine, strychnine, quinine) to which generic term “alkaloid” was introduced in 1818, though not generally used until much later (Parascandola, 80-81).