As the alkaloid morphine, discovered in 1804, was the first substance of the kind known, it naturally received a good deal of attention. Some years later the new base was analysed by several distinguished chemists, but their results did not lead them to a formula accurately indicating the composition of the alkaloid. To Laurent belongs the honour of having given the formula C17H19NO3 (using the modern notation), the accuracy of which formula has been confirmed by subsequent analyses, particularly by those of Matthiessen and Wright. Nothing was ever observed to suggest that the formula is a multiple of these members until Wright, after an elaborate investigation of the derivatives of morphine and codeine, came to the conclusion that the true formula must be at least double the empirical, and that we ought therefore to write C34H38N2O6.