Vitalism
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White blood cell ©Nanoworld 
(Used with permission)

 In earlier times many people thought that there was a vital life force that living things had and non living things did not. Most people don't believe that any more, but the remnants of this idea persist. For instance the chemistry of carbon compounds is called organic chemistry because scientists once thought these compounds could only be made by living things. 

The belief that there is a vital force that is responsible for life and distinguishes living from non living things is called vitalism. Any compounds coming from living things. Therefore(so the vitalists argued), any chemicals derived from living things have some of this impossible to reproduce vital force as part of their nature and so could not be made in the lab. In 1828 the idea of vitalism was dealt a serious blow by the German chemist Friedrich Wohler. He showed that urea, the main nitrogen compound in urine could be easily synthesized in the laboratory simply by heating ammonium cyanate.
Be that as it may, by the mid 19th century vitalism was well on its way out as a plausible hypothesis. Today of course, we know that it is possible to synthesize many "organic" compounds from non living sources. 

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pgd revised 8/2/99