Friedrich Wöhler (1800-1882)

ON THE ARTIFICIAL PRODUCTION OF UREA

Annalen der Physik und Chemie, 88, Leipzig, 1828

In a brief earlier communication, printed in Volume III of these Annals, I stated that by the action of cyanogen on liquid ammonia, besides several other products, there are formed oxalic acid and a crystallizable white substance, which is certainly not ammonium cyanate, but which one always obtains when one attempts to make ammonium cyanate by combining cyanic acid with ammonia, e.g., by so-called double decomposition. The fact that in the union of these substances they appear to change their nature, and give rise to a new body, drew my attention anew to this subject, and research gave the unexpected result that by the combination of cyanic acid with ammonia, urea is formed, a fact that is noteworthy since it furnishes an example of the artificial production of an organic, indeed a so-called animal substance, from inorganic materials.

I have already stated that the above-mentioned white crystal-line substance is best obtained by breaking down silver cyanate with ammonium chloride solution, or lead cyanate with liquid ammonia. In the latter way I prepared for myself the not unimportant amounts employed in this research. It was precipitated in colourless, transparent crystals, often more than an inch long...

With caustic soda or chalk this substance developed no trace of ammonia; with acids it showed none of the breakdown phenomena of cyanates which occur so easily, namely, the evolution of carbon dioxide and cyanic acid; neither could the lead and silver salts be precipitated from it, as from it, as from a true cyanate; it could thus contain neither cyanic acid nor ammonia as such. Since I found that by the last named method of preparation no other product was formed and the lead oxide was separated in a pure form, I imagined that an organic substance might arise by the union of cyanic acid with ammonia, possibly a substance like a vegetable salifiable base. I therefore made some experiments from this point of view on the behaviour of the crystalline substance to acids. But it was indifferent to them, nitric acid excepted; this, when added to a concentrated solution of the substance, produced at once a precipitate of glistening sales. After these had been purified by several recrystallizations, they showed very acid characters, and I was already inclined to take the compound for a real acid, when I found that after neutralization with bases it gave salts of nitric acid, form which the crystallizable substance could be extracted again with alcohol, with all the characters it had before the addition of nitric acid. This similarity to urea in behaviour induced me to make parallel experiments with perfectly pure urea separated from urine, from which I drew the conclusion that without doubt urea and this crystalline substance, or ammonium cyanate, if one can so call it, are absolutely identical compounds.

I will describe the behaviour of this artificial urea no further, since it coincides perfectly with that of urea from urine, according to the accounts of Proust, Prout and others, to be found in their writings, and I will mention only the fact, not specified by them, that both natural an d artificial urea, on distillation, evolve first large amounts of ammonium carbonate, and then give off to a remarkable extent the stinging, acetic-acid-like smell of cyanic acid, exactly as I found in the distillation of mercuric cyanate or uric acid, and especially of the mercury salt of uric acid. In the distillation of urea, another white, apparently distinct substance also appears, with the examination of which I am still occupied.

But if the combination of cyanic acid and ammonia actually gives urea, it must have exactly the composition allotted to ammonium cyanate by calculation from my composition formula for the cyanates; and this is in fact the case if one atom of water is added to ammonium cyanate, as all ammonium salts contain water, and if Prout's analysis of urea is taken as the most correct. According to him, urea consists of

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Friedrich Wöhler (1800-1882) foi um professor na University of Goettingen. Ele tornou-se famoso pela síntese da uréia e outros compostos de amônia partindo de reagentes inorgânicos. Este experimento foi um marco na história da química, e acabou de vez com a teoria da "força vital", que ditava que compostos orgânicos somente poderiam ser obtidos através de organismos vivos. Além disso, ele foi o primeiro a isolar o alumínio e o berílio.