Paragraph 1：The field of chemistry can be roughly divided into organic chemistry, which involves the chemistry of carbon-based compounds, and inorganic chemistry, which deals with all other elements and their compounds. The terms organic and inorganic, as adjectives applied to chemistry, were first used as chemical labels in the 1810s. Before this time, eighteenth-century chemists referred instead to animal, vegetable (plant), and mineral substances, corresponding to the three kingdoms of nature. Of the three, vegetable and animal substances were those produced by and found in living bodies, where their activity was related to the processes of life. Some chemists thought it reasonable to explore those processes chemically, whereas others were convinced that living processes were quite different from the nonliving reactions that they carried out in the laboratory. The former group included the chemists Lavoisier and Berzelius as well as many chemist-pharmacists and chemist-physicians throughout the eighteenth century. The latter group saw the chemistry of living bodies as beyond the reach of chemical investigation. But even those chemists who regarded the substances produced by living nature, by animals and vegetables, as proper subjects for chemical investigation made less progress in organic chemistry than they did in inorganic or mineral chemistry. That is not to say that they did not make significant progress; they successfully established the foundations for a chemistry of plant substances. But the chemistry based on the work of researchers such as Lavoisier and Berzelius was more successful – and succeeded earlier – in the inorganic realm.
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