Morphine Dreams: Auguste Laurent and the Active Principles of Organized Matter

In the 1840s, the French chemist Auguste Laurent turned to the study of the “active principles” of alkaloids, which ranged from the medicinal properties of quinine and cinchonine, to the deadly poison of strychnine, to the intoxicating effects of morphine and nicotine. Laurent had recently returned from working with August Hofmann in Giessen, and soon after began using aniline to synthesize his own, artificial alkaloids. On hearing this, the physicist Jean-Baptiste Biot then approached him to compare the optical properties of his artificial alkaloids to the natural ones. Working with Biot and Apollinaire Bouchardat, the head pharmacist at the Hotel-Dieu, they found that while all the natural alkaloids deviated the plane of polarization of light, or were optically active, the artificial ones were not. Informed by earlier debates about the optical activity of sugar, and whether its conversion into alcohol was a chemical or biological process, they emphasized their results indicated a level of organization that went beyond chemical composition. This paper explores the way that Laurent, Biot and Bouchardat mobilized the concepts of activity and organization to explore the ability of plants to affect the body and maintain a distinction between natural and artificial compounds in the post-vitalist landscape. It also addresses the contextual factors suppressing these views in the chemical community, the use Pasteur made of them uniting his work on fermentation and crystallography, and his subsequent efforts to deemphasize his association with Laurent.