Vitalism and the Origins of Organic Chemistry

Time flies. I can't believe how long it's been since my last post here. I am slacking a little, but part of the reason that posts here have been infrequent is that I've been spending more time with friends, which is something I had a goal of doing. So I'm not too upset. And I am here, right now, updating this blog. So here we go...

In order to appreciate the distinction between organic chemistry and the rest of chemistry, it take some appreciation for the history of the science. Organic chemistry is frequently defined as being the chemistry of carbon or the chemistry of compounds containing carbon.

My textbook puts it rather simply:

Organic chemistry is the chemistry of compounds that contain the element carbon.

Wikipedia is a bit more specific:

Organic chemistry is a discipline within chemistry which involves the scientific study of the structure, properties, composition, reactions, and preparation (by synthesis or by other means) of chemical compounds that contain carbon.

What neither of these simple definitions tell us is that not all compounds containing carbon are considered organic. My textbook doesn't seem to mention it, but looking up "organic compounds" on Wikipedia reveals this:

For historical reasons discussed below, a few types of compounds such as carbonates, simple oxides of carbon and cyanides, as well as the allotropes of carbon, are considered inorganic.

This is because of the now defunct concept of vitalism. People believed that organic matter and inorganic matter were fundamentally different (as an aside, some attribute this to Aristotle, but I haven't looked into it). Carbonates, oxides of carbon, and cyanides (and carbides, another class of inorganic carbon-containing compounds) are all found naturally outside living systems (in minerals, for example). Other carbon-containing compounds were only known to be associated with life. Then this whole view of things got wrecked in 1828 by Friedrich Wöhler doing this reaction:
Pretty cool, huh? Wöhler combined ammonia with a solution of cyanic acid ammonium chloride (dissolved in water) with silver cyanate and got, as a product, urea, which was previously only known to be produced by the kidneys of animals (mammals and some other animals produce urea as a waste product). Although this didn't immediately strike the deathblow for vitalism (which has, in some form or another, survived to this day, although thankfully not among chemists), it laid the foundation for organic chemistry as a field (these compounds were now something that could potentially be synthesized in laboratories and there wasn't necessarily any essential "life force" that was generating them).

The distinction between organic chemistry and inorganic chemistry is important today because organic compounds have some specific properties of their own that can be studied in detail and because organic chemistry is so important in biological systems. Being biological systems ourselves, we have an interest in organic chemistry as it relates to our health. Pharmacy is one branch of applied organic chemistry.

Addendum:

I forgot to mention this, but before taking organic chemistry, I was under the impression, from general chemistry, that organic compounds had both carbon and hydrogen. My organic chemistry professor pointed out early on that technically, not all organic compounds have hydrogen. For example, carbon tetrachloride (CCl₄) is considered an organic compound, but has no hydrogen. However, most organic compounds do contain hydrogen.