Furazanes - Encyclopedia

GEOGRAPHICAL NAMES

FURAZANES (furo - a.a' - diazoles), organic compounds obtained by heating the glyoximes (dioximes of ortho-diketones) with alkalis or ammonia. Dimethylfurazane is prepared by heating dimethylglyoxime with excess of ammonia for six hours at 165° C. (L. Wolff, Ber., 1895, 28, p. 70). It is a liquid (at ordinary temperature) which boils at 156° C. (744 mm.). Potassium permanganate oxidizes it first to methylfurazanecarboxylic acid and then to furazanedicarboxylic acid. Methylethylfurazane and diphenylfurazane are also known. By warming oxyfurazane acetic acid with excess of potassium permanganate to C. oxyfurazanecarboxylic acid is obtained (A. Hantzsch and J. Urbahn, Ber., 1895, 28, p. 764). It crystallizes in prisms, which melt at 175° C. Furazanecarboxylic acid is prepared by the action of a large excess of potassium permanganate on a hot solution of furazanepropionic acid. It melts at 107° C., and dissolves in caustic soda, with a deep yellow colour and formation of nitrosocyanacetic acid (L. Wolff and P. F. Ganz, Ber., 1891, 24, p. 1167). Furoxane is an oxide of furazane, considered by H. Wieland to be identical with glyoxime peroxide; Kekule's dibromnitroacetonitrile is dibromfuroxane.

The formulae of the compounds above mentioned are: Furetiere, Antoine (1619-1688), French scholar and miscellaneous writer, was born in Paris on the 28th of December 1619. He first studied law, and practised for a time as an advocate, but eventually took orders and after various preferments became abbe of Chalivoy in the diocese of Bourges in 1662. In his leisure moments he devoted himself to letters, and in virtue of his satires - Nouvelle Allegorique, ou histoire des derniers troubles arrives au royaume d'eloquence (1658); Voyage de Mercure (1653) - he was admitted a member of the French Academy in 1662. That learned body had long promised a complete dictionary of the French tongue; and when they heard that Furetiere was on the point of issuing a work of a similar nature, they interfered, alleging that he had purloined from their stores, and that they possessed the exclusive privilege of publishing such a book. After much bitter recrimination on both sides the offender was expelled in 1685; but for this act of injustice he took a severe revenge in his satire, Couches de l'academie (Amsterdam, 1687). His Dictionnaire universel was posthumously published in 1690 (Rotterdam, 2 vols.). It was afterwards revised and improved by the Protestant jurist, Henri Basnage de Beauval (1656-1710), who published his edition (3 vols.) in 1701; and it was only superseded by the compilation known as the Dictionnaire de Trevoux (Paris, 3 vols., 1704; 7th ed., 8 vols., 1771), which was in fact little more than a reimpression of Basnage's edition. Furetiere is perhaps even better known as the author of Le Roman bourgeois (1666). It cast ridicule on the fashionable romances of Mlle de Scudery and of La Calprenede, and is of interest as descriptive of the everyday life of his times. There is no element of burlesque, as in Scarron's Roman comique, but the author contents himself with stringing together a number of episodes and portraits, obviously drawn from life, without much attempt at sequence. The book was edited in 1854 by Edward Fournier and Charles Asselineau and by P. Jannet.

The Fureteriana, which appeared in Paris eight years after Furetiere's death, which took place on the 14th of May 1688, is a collection of but little value.