Friedrich Wöhler was a German teacher and physician who first isolated urea, a compound usually found in mammals’ urine. In a letter on this date in 1828, Wöhler told Swedish chemist Baron Jons Jakob Berzelius that he could make an organic substance, urea, from nonorganic substances. He took silver cyanate and combined it with ammonium chloride solution; the result was a white crystalline material identical to the urea found in human urine. Wöhler wrote, “I must tell you that I can make urea without the use of kidneys, either man or dog. Ammonium cyanate is urea." His experiments proved that “vitalism,” a reigning theory of the day, wasn’t always true. Proponents of vitalism believed that organic chemicals could only be modified by chemistry, but needed living plants or animals to actually produce them. Wöhler’s synthesis of urea in the laboratory proved that theory false.

Copyright Aetna InteliHealth, Inc., 2012. All rights reserved.