Editing Organic compound (section)

===Vitalism===
{{Main|Vitalism}}
[[Vitalism]] was a widespread conception that substances found in organic nature are formed from the chemical elements by the action of a "vital force"<ref name="Encyclopedia Britannica 1998 l574">{{cite web | title=Life Force, Naturalism & Holism | website=Encyclopedia Britannica | date=July 20, 1998 | url=https://www.britannica.com/topic/vitalism | access-date=March 10, 2024}}</ref> or "life-force" (''vis vitalis'') that only living organisms possess.<ref name="Naylor_2023">{{cite journal |last1=Naylor |first1=R. L. |last2=Martin |first2=J. D. |last3=Staley |first3=R. |date=2023 |title=Vital Physics |url=https://rdcu.be/dAJAX |journal=Physics in Perspective |volume=25 |issue=1–2 |pages=1–2 |doi=10.1007/s00016-023-00297-z |bibcode=2023PhP....25....1N |access-date=2024-03-10}}</ref>

In the 1810s, [[Jöns Jacob Berzelius]] argued that a regulative force must exist within living bodies. Berzelius also contended that compounds could be distinguished by whether they required any organisms in their [[Biosynthesis|synthesis]] (organic compounds) or whether they did not ([[inorganic compounds]]).<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Wilkinson|first=Ian|date=2002-06-10|title=History of Clinical Chemistry|journal=EJIFCC|volume=13|issue=4|pages=114–118|issn=1650-3414|pmc=6208063}}</ref> Vitalism taught that formation of these "organic" compounds were fundamentally different from the "inorganic" compounds that could be obtained from the elements by chemical manipulations in laboratories.<ref name="Coulter_2019">{{cite journal |last1=Coulter |first1=Ian |last2=Snider |first2=Pamela |last3=Neil |first3=Amy |date=June 2019 |title=Vitalism–A Worldview Revisited: A Critique Of Vitalism And Its Implications For Integrative Medicine |journal=Integrative Medicine: A Clinician's Journal |volume=18 |issue=3 |pages=60–73 |pmid= 32549817 |pmc=7217401 }}</ref><ref name="Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy 2024 c869">{{cite web | title=Vitalism: Physiological Chemistry | website=Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy | date=March 10, 2024 | url=https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/vitalism/v-1/sections/physiological-chemistry | access-date=March 10, 2024}}</ref>

Vitalism survived for a short period after the formulation of modern ideas about the [[atomic theory]] and [[chemical element]]s. It first came under question in 1824, when [[Friedrich Wöhler]] synthesized [[oxalic acid]], a compound known to occur only in living organisms, from [[cyanogen]]. A further experiment was [[Wöhler synthesis|Wöhler's 1828 synthesis]] of [[urea]] from the inorganic [[salt (chemistry)|salts]] [[potassium cyanate]] and [[ammonium sulfate]]. Urea had long been considered an "organic" compound, as it was known to occur only in the urine of living organisms. Wöhler's experiments were followed by many others, in which increasingly complex "organic" substances were produced from "inorganic" ones without the involvement of any living organism, thus disproving vitalism.<ref>{{cite book|title=A Source Book in Chemistry, 1400-1900|author=Henry Marshall Leicester|author-link=Henry Marshall Leicester|author2=Herbert S. Klickstein|publisher=Harvard University Press|date=1951|page=309}}</ref>