5. On the Oxidation of Phenyl Alcohol, and a Mechanical Arrangement adapted to illustrate Structure in the Nonsaturated Hydrocarbons

Abstract

The syntheses and oxidation analyses of organic compounds have so confirmed each other in many cases, that chemists are enabled to judge of the structure of a compound from the oxidation products. Many chemists have used the oxidation method in special cases, the bodies operated upon belonging principally to the fatty series; but until Fittig and Beilstein published their memoirs on the aromatic compounds, it was never applied to the systematic study of a hydrocarbon and its derivatives. But although the syntheses and oxidation analyses of the derivatives of benzol confirmed each other, still the structure of the original nucleus (benzol) remained unexplained. Kekulê's original and elegant speculations on the structure of benzol and its derivatives induced me to try the effect of oxidising agents on benzol, with the view of eliciting whether the carbon atoms would separate in the way theory pointed out. The carbon atoms in benzol may be supposed to be arranged in a closed chain, where the carbon affinities are bound two and one alternately.