Comments on: Science In The Attic http://cenblog.org/2008/05/19/science-in-the-attic/ Sat, 11 Oct 2008 12:46:26 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.3.3 By: Antoinette Hayes http://cenblog.org/2008/05/19/science-in-the-attic/#comment-726 Antoinette Hayes Fri, 23 May 2008 13:15:55 +0000 http://cenblog.org/2008/05/19/science-in-the-attic/#comment-726 I own a book titled "Cinchona in Java: The Story of Quinine" written in 1945 by Norman Taylor There is a line at the end of the book that really surprised me; Quote: "The recent synthesis of quinine by R.B. Woodward and W.E. Doering of Harvard University is a remarkable chemical triumph which has baffled science ever since the attempt by Perkin in England in 1856..." Then the paragraph goes on to say that the synthetic route is nothing more than a "curiosity" and will never be a pratical source of the drug. I thought this was a really interesting book and great commentary on the thinking of the time when natural products were still, for the most part, extracted and isolated from their source. This book is also one of the few books in English that I've found which has more than a page of text dedicated to the pharmacists and chemists, Joseph Pelletier 1788-1842 and Joseph Caventou 1795-1877, who were the first to isolate strychine, quinine, and a host of other alkaloids from their natural sources. I own a book titled “Cinchona in Java: The Story of Quinine” written in 1945 by Norman Taylor
There is a line at the end of the book that really surprised me;
Quote: “The recent synthesis of quinine by R.B. Woodward and W.E. Doering of Harvard University is a remarkable chemical triumph which has baffled science ever since the attempt by Perkin in England in 1856…”

Then the paragraph goes on to say that the synthetic route is nothing more than a “curiosity” and will never be a pratical source of the drug.

I thought this was a really interesting book and great commentary on the thinking of the time when natural products were still, for the most part, extracted and isolated from their source.
This book is also one of the few books in English that I’ve found which has more than a page of text dedicated to the pharmacists and chemists, Joseph Pelletier 1788-1842 and Joseph Caventou 1795-1877, who were the first to isolate strychine, quinine, and a host of other alkaloids from their natural sources.

]]> By: Carmen Drahl http://cenblog.org/2008/05/19/science-in-the-attic/#comment-719 Carmen Drahl Wed, 21 May 2008 15:31:58 +0000 http://cenblog.org/2008/05/19/science-in-the-attic/#comment-719 Awesome. What about antique periodic tables? Theodore Gray's are nifty and all, but I'd love to see a pre-Technetium periodic table. Or maybe there are tables out there that include the names Mendeleev gave to the elements he predicted, like Ekasilicon (germanium). The analogy that comes to mind is looking at U.S. flags from around that same time (1870s, 1880s), watching the nation add more and more stars to the design. Awesome. What about antique periodic tables? Theodore Gray’s are nifty and all, but I’d love to see a pre-Technetium periodic table. Or maybe there are tables out there that include the names Mendeleev gave to the elements he predicted, like Ekasilicon (germanium). The analogy that comes to mind is looking at U.S. flags from around that same time (1870s, 1880s), watching the nation add more and more stars to the design.

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