(a) What are organic compounds?

(b) What is vital force theory? Why was it discarded?

(a) Organic compounds are the compounds of carbon excluding oxides of carbon, metallic carbonates and related compounds like metal cyanides, metal carbides, etc.

(b) As organic compounds were obtained straight from nature and there was no known method of preparing them in the laboratory, hence it was believed that they were the products of some vital force of nature. This theory was known as vital force theory.

This theory was soon discarded when in 1828, Friedrich Wohler demonstrated that an organic chemical (urea) could be produced in the laboratory.