Organ, Organic, Organism

Organ, Organic, Organism, terms derived from the Greek organon, 'an instrument,' and still retaining in some of their applications that significance. But the words have found special acceptance in connection with the forms of life; Linnæus described these, whether animals or plants, as Organisata; and we constantly speak of them as organisms, of their larger, well-defined, and integrated parts as organs, of their internal activity and its products as organic. Prior to the year 1828 it was believed that certain chemical compounds which were produced as the results of vital processes occurring within the tissues of animal and vegetable organisms could not be obtained by the ordinary methods of the chemical laboratory; and these compounds were, for this reason, designated as organic. Wöhler in that year, however, discovered that urea, the most important solid constituent of urine, could be obtained 'artificially,' as it has been called, from inorganic materials. Since that date a very large number of so-called organic compounds have been prepared artificially, so that the original signification of the term 'organic' does not hold any longer; and the old conception of an organism as an engine-like collection of organs with fixed functions is disappearing before the doctrine that it is the protoplasm or living stuff in all parts of the body that is the basis of all vital activities. The title of organic chemistry is now commonly applied to the chemistry of the compounds of carbon, whether these compounds are obtainable only as the products of vital processes or not; see the articles CHEMISTRY and ANALYSIS (ORGANIC). Organic impurities in water are those due to animalcules, bacteria, and decomposing organisms; while such phrases as 'organic disease,' 'organic connection,' refer to the relation between a living organism and its parts. See BIOLOGY, FUNCTION, MORPHOLOGY, PHYSIOLOGY.—For organic bases, see ALKALOIDS; for organic radicals, see RADICAL.