In 1832 Liebig, in conjunction with his colleague Winter, com menced editing the 'Annalen der Pharmacie.' This work, which has been regularly brought out from the time of its first appearance till the present, comprises papers on all subjects connected with pharmacy, and it contains a large number of papers by Liebig himself. Latterly, Liebig has only taken a secondary part in editing this work, and Professor I'uffendorf has been associated with Professor Wiihler and himself.
In the autumn of 1838 Liebig visited England, and was present at the meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, which was that year held for the first time at Liverpool. At this meeting he read a paper on the composition and chemical relations of lithic acid. In this paper he announced Wohler's great discovery of the composition of urea, and the method of making it artificially. With the exception of oxalic and hydrocyanic acids, which are much simpler substances, this was the first time that the chemist had succeeded in forming out of the living body an organic compound. Liebig's paper on lithic acid showed how highly he estimated Wohler's discovery, and which led him to anticipate the time when other organic sub stances would be formed, and the chemistry of life be eventually solved. On the associated men of science at this meeting Leibig's presence made a deep impression, and it was with the sanction of the whole meeting that he was requested to draw up two reports, one On Isomeric Bodies,' the other On Organic Chemistry.' To these reports the young chemists of this country looked forward with anxiety. It is true that organio chemistry had at least one laborious representative in this country in Prout, but nothing had been done even in our medical schools to form a school of organic chemistry. It was known that Liebig had worked laboriously at almost every department of organic chemistry, but a knowledge of the progress of this science on the Continent was confined to only a few. The next meeting of the British Association was held at Birmingham, but no report appeared from Licbig. It was between this meeting and that of Glasgow, which was held in 1840, that Liebig brought out the work entitled, Chemistry in its Application to Agriculture and Physiology.'
It was translated into English from the manuscript of the author by Dr. Lyon Playfair, and dedicated to the British Association for the Advancement of Science. It is difilcult to say how much of this work was really original matter. The whole was however worked out with the hand of a master. His own original investigations on a great variety of subjects, with those of Mulder on the natnre and relations of the nitrogenous products of plants, were arranged in the form of a theory of vegetable life, which, however it might have been appro.
handed by some in parts, now appeared for the first time as a consistent whole. In his dedication the author says that in this work he has " endeavoured to develops in a manner correspondent to the present state of science, the fundamental principles of chemistry in geucral, and the laws of organic chemistry in particular, in their application to agriculture and physiology ; to the causes of fermentation, decay, and putrefaction; to vinous and acetone fermentation, and to nitrifica tion. The conversion of woody fibre into wood and mineral coal, the nature of poisons, contagions, and miasma, and the causes of their action on the living organism, have been elucidated in their chemical relations." Perhaps one of the most original portions of the book is that devoted to the consideration of the action of poisons on the system, in which be endeavours to show that poisons act injuriously on the system,—first, definite chemical compounds with the substances forming the flesh of the body poisoned, and thus rendering life impossible, as in the case of and corrosive sublimate ;—and secondly, by Inducing chemical changes by contact, as is seen in many cases of inorganic bodies, in fermentation, putrefaction, and creme causis or decay in organic bodies. In this way he explains the origin of the various forms of contagious disease by the introduction into the system of a substance capable of communicating to the solids and fluids of the body the same state of change in which it is in itself. This subject was brought by Dr. Lyon Playfair before the Glasgow meeting of the British Association in 1840.