Johan Baptista van Helmont

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Johan Baptista van Helmont, wrongly attributed to “ Robert Hooke ” by Lisa Jardine
Johan Baptista van Helmont, title copper for “Rise of Artzney Art”, 1683
Johan Baptista van Helmont and his son Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont (1614–1699), by JB van Helmont, Ortus medicinae (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1648)
Monument to Johan Baptista van Helmont in Brussels

Johan Baptista van Helmont , also Jan Baptist van Helmont and Jean (-) Baptiste van Helmont (born January 12, 1580 in Brussels , † December 30, 1644 in Vilvoorde near Brussels), was a Flemish universal scientist. He was mainly active as a doctor , natural scientist and chemist .

Life

Johan Baptista van Helmont was born into a wealthy Flemish noble family. His inheritance (his father died in 1580) and the income from his wife's fiefs made him financially independent throughout his life. He studied philosophy , theology , natural history and medicine in a Jesuit seminar in Leuven and received his doctorate in 1599. med. He started teaching at the age of 17. After study trips to Switzerland , Italy , France , Germany and England , he first returned to Amsterdam in 1605 and worked as a doctor during a plague epidemic. In 1606 he settled as a doctor and naturalist on his Vilvoorde estate near Brussels. There he also carried out chemical and physiological experiments in his private laboratory. Instead of accepting the offer of the Jesuits to enter church service, he married Margarite van Ranst in 1609 and received the title of Lord . He also turned down a call from Emperor Rudolf II . Van Helmont dealt with the works of Galen , Hippocrates , Avicenna and Paracelsus . He was a supporter of Paracelsus and viewed him as his role model, whereas he rejected galenic medicine and, based on his own research, came to results that contradicted the traditional concept of humoral pathology . This is also based on the fact that he had been attacked by the scabies and the "galenists", unlike an Italian alchemist who used mercury and sulfur, could not cure him. In contrast to galenic medicine, for which illness was a confusion of the juices that affected the organism in its entirety, according to van Helmont illnesses were independent living beings that penetrated the body from outside, settled in a special organ and impaired its functionality .

Van Helmont became the founder of iatrochemistry with Christian-mythical traits, which he opposed to iatromechanics . He presented all life processes as chemical processes, which he called " fermentation " and traced back to " gaseous ferments ". In 1644 he was the first to synthesize sulfuric acid copper oxide ammoniatum ( Cuprum sulfuricum ammoniatum , cupriammonium sulfate , copper salmiac ). Van Helmont owes the discovery of coal gases in the early days of modern chemistry. He discovered a "wild spirit" emanating from heated wood and charcoal, and in his book "Origins of Medicine" (1609) he called it "gas" (derived from chaos, ghost, gauze, blow ...).

Van Helmont closely followed the controversy between the Marburg professor Rudolf Goclenius the Elder. J. and the Belgian Jesuit Jean Roberti . In 1617 the latter had rejected the healing method of magnetic wound healing with the " sympathetic powder " published by Goclenius in 1608 . According to his information, a manuscript by van Helmont with extensive support of the Protestant professor's point of view was published by Roberti against his will. His ideas brought him into conflict with the Roman Catholic Church . In 1625 the Spanish Inquisition (responsible for the Spanish Netherlands ) condemned 27 statements as heresy , presumptuous arrogance, proximity to Lutheran and Calvinist teachings. The University of Leuven rejected his teachings as they were inspired by Paracelsus . From 1633 to 1636 he was under house arrest. Church persecution did not end until 1642 when he received the imprimatur for a treatise on fever. Therefore he could not publish in the period between 1624 and 1642, until shortly before his death. Full rehabilitation did not take place until 1646 after his death.

His son, the famous theosophical doctor Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont (1614–1699), published the works he left behind. It is believed that he gave his son the name Mercurius (Greek Hermes ) to indicate his closeness to the Hermetic doctrine .

Life's work

As a polymath

His son published a complete edition of his works " Ortus medicinae vel opera et opuscula omnia of Johann Baptist van Helmont " (Amsterdam 1648). This shows that he dealt with "general science", theology , metaphysics , cosmology , meteorology , astrology , chemistry , pyrotechnics , physics , natural history , magic , anthropology , medicine , botany and the art of pharmacy .

As a doctor

It was not until 1616 that he began to work as a general practitioner, applying some of his inventions and discoveries to his patients. For example, through “magical cures”, physical illnesses and psychological ailments should be drawn out of the body, as it were with a magnet . He even wanted to attribute the healing properties of relics to magnetic forces. Van Helmont paid particular attention to the stomach , in which he saw the center of material transformation. He discovered that digestive processes are not caused by heat, but by acids . His financial situation allowed him to only accept voluntary donations for treatment. Van Helmont treated the poor and the rich equally. He earned his reputation for successfully treating epilepsy , rage , syphilis , bladder stones, and dropsy . In his book “Tumulus pestis”, van Helmont set out a theory about the origins of the plague , which differed fundamentally from all models of the causes of the plague that had been common up until then.

As an alchemist and chemist

As a child of his time, van Helmont was a believer in hermetic teaching . He was convinced that his transmutation of mercury in gold had succeeded. His work made him a trailblazer in experimental chemistry and an early pioneer in biochemistry . We owe to him the term “ gas ” and the knowledge that there are “air-like substances” whose properties nevertheless differ from those of ordinary atmospheric air. His “ gaz sylvestre ”, which was created when wood was burned, is carbon dioxide . He isolated carbon monoxide and carbon dioxide from fermenting wine . He found sulfuric and hydrochloric acid and was the first to recognize the importance of hydrochloric acid for digestion in the stomach. He was also one of the first to use scales . The transition from the more qualitative statements of the alchemists to quantitative analysis (see following section) led to modern chemistry . Through his investigations and theories on the immutability of some substances, he was a pioneer in understanding chemistry.

As a naturalist

One of Helmont's experiments was to transplant a five-pound willow sapling. Since the time of ancient Greek natural philosophy, it has been assumed that all matter consists of four elements , namely earth , water , fire and air . With the willow sapling, van Helmont wanted to prove that only air and water are elementary materials. He took the sapling from nature, removed the soil from the roots and weighed it. Then he planted it in a pot full of earth that had also been weighed. The tree was then regularly watered with water, nothing else was added. Five years after he planted the willow , he pulled it out of the soil in the pot and weighed both a second time. Only 2 ounces had been lost from the earth during this time , but the tree weighed 169 pounds and weighed 3 ounces. From this Van Helmont drew the reasonable conclusion according to the state of knowledge at the time: “164 pounds of wood, bark and roots were made from water alone”. Only later did research by other scholars establish that plants also need air (especially the carbon dioxide they contain ), light and - in much smaller quantities - substances from the soil to grow .

Another experiment that van Helmont described concerned the question, which has been discussed since antiquity and answered positively in the tradition of Aristotle, as to whether the organic can arise from the inorganic (so-called spontaneous generation or spontaneous emergence of life from inanimate matter, also called abiogenesis). As a proof of this possibility, Van Helmont mentioned an experiment in the production of mice: Take a clay jug, fill it with damp wheat and the clothing of a menstruating woman, cover the vessel and wait 21 days, then a ferment from the clothes would have the wheat in mice transformed. In 1668 the theory of spontaneous generation was finally refuted by the attempts of the Italian doctor Francesco Redi .

Works

  • 1621 - De magnetica vulnerum naturali et ligitima curatione. Disputatio, contra opinionem d. Ioan. Roberti (...) in brevi sua anatome sub censurae specie exaratam , Paris
  • 1642 - Febrium doctrina inaudita , Antwerp
  • 1644 - Opuscula medica inaudita , 2nd edition, Amsterdam 1648
  • 1648 - Ortus medicinae, id est Initia physicae inaudita… Ludovicus Elzevirius, Amsterdam (digitized version)
  • 1659 - Dageraad ofte Nieuwe Opkomst der Geneeskonst , Amsterdam.
  • 1681 - Tumulus pestis. That is: Thorough origin of the plague / Dero essence / kind / and property; as well as the same reliable and steady recovery. Besides adding the true cause and reason of all kinds of fever; And in what bit at that time in curation has been erred. Through Johannem Baptistam von Helmont, Lord von Merode / Royenborg / Orschot and Pellines / u. in Nieder-Teutsch; and also described in Latin below. Anjetzo but / bey ob-floating dangerous runs and rampant epidemics / masculine for the best / translated from Dutch. By Johannem Henricum Seyfried, Sultzbach 1681.
  • 1683 - Rise of Artzney art, that is: Basic teachings of nature that have never been heard before: to a new promotion of Artzney things ... Johann Andreae Endters Sons, Sultzbach 1683 (digitized version )

literature

  • Steffen Ducheyne: Joan Baptiste Van Helmont and the Question of Experimental Modernism. Physis: Rivista Internazionale di Storia della Scienza, vol. 43, 2005, pp. 305-332.
  • Walter Pagel :
    • Johann Baptist van Helmont. Introduction to the philosophical medicine of the baroque. Springer Verlag, Berlin 1930.
    • The religious and philosophical aspects of van Helmont's Science and Medicine. Supplements to the Bulletin of the History of Medicine No 2, Johns Hopkins Press, Baltimore 1944.
    • Joan Baptista van Helmont: Reformer of Science and Medicine. Cambridge 1982.
  • Walter Pagel: Helmont, Johannes (Joan) Baptistia van . In: Charles Coulston Gillispie (Ed.): Dictionary of Scientific Biography . tape 6 : Jean Hachette - Joseph Hyrtl . Charles Scribner's Sons, New York 1972, p. 253-259 .
  • Claus BernetJohan Baptista van Helmont. In: Biographisch-Bibliographisches Kirchenlexikon (BBKL). Volume 25, Bautz, Nordhausen 2005, ISBN 3-88309-332-7 , Sp. 597-621.
  • Hugo DelffHelmont, Johann Baptist von . In: Allgemeine Deutsche Biographie (ADB). Volume 11, Duncker & Humblot, Leipzig 1880, pp. 703-707.
  • Helmont, Johann Baptist von . In: Lexicon of important chemists by Winfried R. Pötsch (lead); Annelore Fischer; Wolfgang Müller. With the collaboration of Heinz Cassebaum . Bibliographisches Institut, Leipzig 1988 ISBN 3-323-00185-0 , pp. 195-196
  • Antonio Clericuzio : From Van Helmont to Boyle: a study of the transmission of Helmontian chemical and medical theories in seventeenth-century England , British Journal for the History of Science, 26 (1993), 303-334.
  • Antonio Clericuzio: Johannes (Joan) Baptista van Helmont. In: Claus Priesner , Karin Figala : Alchemie. Lexicon of a Hermetic Science. Beck 1998, pp. 169-171.
  • Friedrich Giesecke: The mysticism of Joh. Baptist von Helmonts. Leitmeritz, 1908 (dissertation), digitized .
  • Barbara I. Tshisuaka: Helmont, Jan Baptist van. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 567.
  • Saverio Campanini: The Kiss of Death and Other Diseases. About a Jewish motif in Johann Baptista van Helmont's works , in “Morgen-Glantz. Journal of the Christian Knorr von Rosenroth Society »27 (2017), pp. 149–166.
  • Johann Werfring: The imagination of Johann Baptista van Helmonts . In: Johann Werfring: The origin of the pestilence. On the etiology of the plague in the loimographic discourse of the early modern period , Edition Praesens, 2nd edition, Vienna 1999 (= Medicine, Culture and Society, Vol. 2), ISBN 3-7069-0002-5 , pp. 206–222.

Individual evidence

  1. ^ JR Partington : Joan Baptista van Helmont. In: Annals of Science. Volume 1, Issue 4, 1936, pp. 359-384, doi : 10.1080 / 00033793600200291 .
  2. Johann Werfring: The origin of the pestilence. On the etiology of the plague in the loimographic discourse of the early modern era , Edition Praesens, 2nd edition, Vienna 1999 (= Medicine, Culture and Society, Vol. 2), ISBN 3-7069-0002-5 , pp. 206–208.
  3. ^ Meyers Großes Konversations-Lexikon, Volume 11. Leipzig 1907, pp. 845–846.
  4. Wolf Schneider : Words make people . Magic and Power of Language, 15th edition, Piper-TB 479, Munich / Zurich 2009, p. 35, ISBN 978-3-492-20479-8 .
  5. Johann Werfring: The origin of the pestilence. On the etiology of the plague in the loimographic discourse of the early modern period , Edition Praesens, 2nd edition, Vienna 1999 (= Medicine, Culture and Society, Vol. 2), ISBN 3-7069-0002-5 , p. 214.
  6. JB van Helmont. Rise of the Artzney art, that is: Basic teachings never heard before from nature to a new advancement of Artzney things to both drive away diseases and to cure them . Sulzbach 1683, p. 148, chapter 30. (digitized version)
  7. JB van Helmont. Rise of the Artzney art, that is: Basic teachings never heard before from nature to a new advancement of Artzney things to both drive away diseases and to cure them . Sulzbach 1683, p. 153, chapter 9. (digitized version)
  8. Francesco Redi. Esperienze intorno alla generazione degli'insetti. Florence 1668.

Web links

Commons : Johan Baptista van Helmont  - Collection of images, videos and audio files