Nicolas Lémery

Nicolas Lémery

Nicolas Lémery (born November 17, 1645 in Rouen , † June 19, 1715 in Paris ) was a French chemist and medicin. He was the author of several textbooks and lexicons of chemistry and was one of the first chemists to scientifically explain the metal antimony and the chemistry of acids and bases .

Life

Nicolas Lémery was born the fifth and fifth child of Julien Lémery and his second wife Susan Duchemin. His father was procurator of the Normandy Parliament and died when Nicolas was eleven years old. Most likely he attended a Protestant school in Grand-Quevilly in the suburb of Rouen . Around the age of fifteen he began training in his maternal uncle Pierre Duchemin's pharmacy in Rouen. After six years of activity, he then left Rouen in 1666 to expand his knowledge in Paris with the pharmacologist Christophe Glaser , the pharmacist at the court of Louis XIV .

Between 1668 and 1672 he lived in Montpellier , but as a Protestant he could not become a member of the pharmacists' guild. In 1672 he went back to Paris to work in the laboratory of Bernardin Martin (1629-1703), the pharmacist of Louis II. De Bourbon, prince de Condé . With the support of the Prince of Condé, he practiced until 1683, after which his pharmacist license was revoked.

Lémery went to the University of Caen , where he received his doctorate in medicine. In 1685, the Nantes Edict of Tolerance on the free exercise of religion in France was revoked and resulted in thousands of French Protestants leaving the country as so-called Huguenots. Lémery converted to Catholicism and taught chemistry in public lectures outside the university, clearly distinguishing it from alchemy , which had the reputation of Paracelsian teaching and was rejected.

In 1677 his son Louis Lémery was born, who later also became a chemist and doctor at the royal hospital in Paris. In 1699 Lémery was accepted into the Académie Royale des Sciences .

Works

Title page of the Cours de chymie (1687)

In 1675 Lémery published his work Cours de Chymie , which presented chemistry as an auxiliary science of medicine in the early editions, but later increasingly excluded this position and chemistry as a separate science of the natural processes involved in the distillation , fermentation and sublimation of plant and animal species and mineral substances. The work was published in German translation under the title Cours de Chimie or The Perfect Chymist in Dresden in 1697 and was reprinted several times in the following years up to 1754. It has also been translated into other languages.

He differentiated plant, animal and mineral substances and saw 5 basic components: two passive (water, earth) and three active (Mercurius, Sulfur and Sal in the alchemical classification according to Paracelsus ). In the alchemical sense , these principles stood for more than the mere name implies, e.g. Mercurius (mercury) for liquids such as alcohol (spirit), sulfur (sulfur) for combustibles, volatiles such as oils. He also represented a kind of atomic theory with corpuscles similar to that of Robert Boyle . Depending on the proportion of the basic components in the corpuscles and their mechanical properties, their chemical character is determined. This was explicitly expressed in his imagination in hooks, eyes, points, indentations, etc. The acid character goes back to the tips in the corpuscles, the flammability to the sulfur content, elasticity to the spiral shape of the corpuscles. Boyle, on the other hand, still assumed uniform atoms as the basis, which combined to form various structures, which then explained the macroscopic and chemical properties, which, in Lemery's view, was not sufficient for more far-reaching explanations and for their characterization he used a combination in addition to the atomic model the old alchemical theory of elements took over (with the traditional four elements or the three according to the teaching of the Paracelsists).

In 1697 the Pharmacopie universelle was published and the following year Traité universel des drogues simples , which in 1716 after the third edition in Amsterdam also appeared in German translation as a materials encyclopedia. This lexicon of materials was subsequently completely incorporated into the large, complete universal lexicon of all sciences and arts by Johann Heinrich Zedler , published in 1732 and 1754 , but without being given as the source. The entry about Lemery does not contain any information about it either, nor is the German translation mentioned there.

In 1707 he published a treatise on the chemical element antimony under the title Traité de l'Antimoine , the German translation took place in 1709 under the title Neue curieuse, chymic secrets of Antimonii .

• Course de chymie: contenant la maniere de faire les operations qui sont en usage dans la medecine, par un method facile; avec des raisonnements sur chaque operation, pour l'instruction de ceux qui veulent s'appliquer a cette science . Paris 1675 (digitized) . 6th ed. Michallet, Paris 1687. urn : nbn: de: hbz: 061: 2-25561
• Het philosoophze laboratorium, often 'der chymisten stook-huis, ten Hoorn, Amsterdam 1691. urn : nbn: de: hbz: 061: 2-26461
• Nouveau recueil de [s] secrets et curiositez, les plus rares & admirables de tous les effects, que l'art & la nature sont capables de produire . 5th ed.Mortier , Amsterdam 1697. urn : nbn: de: hbz: 061: 2-25711 , urn : nbn: de: hbz: 061: 2-33767 , urn : nbn: de: hbz: 061: 2-33758
• A course of chymistry: containing an easie method of preparing those chymical medicins which are used in physick; with curious remarks and useful discourses upon each preparation, for the benefit of such a desire to be instructed in the knowledge of this art . - The 3rd. ed., transl. from the 8th ed. in the French. Kettilby, London 1698. urn : nbn: de: hbz: 061: 2-27647
• Cours de chymie, or the perfect chymist: who learns to do the chymic processes used in medicine in the easiest and most healing way ... Translated from the 9th French edition of the 1697th year into German. Winckler, Dresden 1698, urn : nbn: de: hbz: 061: 2-18093
• A compleat history of druggs: written in French by Monsieur Pomet, chief druggist to the present French king; to which is added what is further observable on the same subject, from Messrs. Lemery and Tournefort, divided into 3 classes, vegetable, animal and mineral, with their use in physick, chymistry, pharmacy and several other arts; done into English from the originals . London 1712 urn : nbn: de: hbz: 061: 2-153011
• Farmacopea universale che contiene tutte le composizioni di farmacia le qualisono in uso nella medicina: tanto in Francia, quanto per tutta l'europa,… e di piu un vocabolario farmaceutico, molte nuove osservazioni, ed alcuni ragionamenti sopra ogni operazione . Gio. Gabriel Hertz, Venezia 1720, urn : nbn: de: hbz: 061: 2-170928
• Dictionaire, ou traité universel des drogues simples ou l'on trouve leurs differens noms, leur origine, leur choix, les principes qu'elles renferment, leurs qualitez, leur etymologie, & tout ce qu'il ya de particulier dans les animaux, dans les vegetaux, & dans les mineraux; ouvrage dependent de la Pharmacopee universelle. 3. Edition. Amsterdam 1716; 4th edition Hofhout, Rotterdam 1727, urn : nbn: de: hbz: 061: 2-134542
• Pharmacopée universelle: contenant toutes les compositions de pharmacie qui sont en usage dans la medicine, tant en France que par toute l'Europe, leurs vertus, leurs doses, les manieres d'operer les plus simples & les meilleures; avec un lexicon pharmaceutique, plusieurs remarques nouvelles, et des raisonnemens sur chaque operation . 3.ed. d'Houry, Paris 1728, urn : nbn: de: hbz: 061: 2-134535
• Course de chymie: contenant la maniere de faire les operations qui sont en usage dans la medecine, par un method facile; avec des raisonnemens sur chaque operation, pour l'instruction de ceux qui veulent s'appliquer a cette science . 11th ed.Delespine, Paris: 1730, urn : nbn: de: hbz: 061: 2-25955
• Traité universel des drogues simples: mises en ordre alphabetique, ou l'on trouve leurs differens noms, leur origine, leur choix, les principes qu'elles renferment, leurs qualitez, leur etimologie, & tout ce qu'il ya de particulier dans les animaux, dans les vegetaux, & dans les mineraux; ouvrage dependent de la Pharmacopee universelle . 4th ed. D'Houry, Paris 1732, urn : nbn: de: hbz: 061: 2-134522
• Course de chymie: contenant la maniere de faire les operations qui sont en usage dans la medecine, par un method facile; avec des raisonnemens sur chaque operation, pour l'instruction de ceux qui veulent s'appliquer a cette science . Leonard, Bruxelles 1744, urn : nbn: de: hbz: 061: 2-25385
• Nicolai Lemeri cursus chymicus, or perfect chymist: who teaches the most sensible, easiest and safest way to prepare the chymic preparata and processes occurring in medicine; translated from French. -… In this 5th edition revised, corrected and enlarged by Johann Christian Zimmermann.Walther, Dresden 1754, urn : nbn: de: hbz: 061: 2-26395

literature

• Ulrich Johannes Schneider : Foreword to the digital edition by Nicolas Lemery: Complete Lexicon of Materials. Directmedia Publishing, Berlin 2007, ISBN 978-3-89853-613-4 .
• Jaime Wisniak: Nicolas Lémery . In: Revista CENIC Ciencias Químicas . Volume 36, Number 2, 2005, pp. 123-130 redalyc.org (PDF).

Web links

Wikisource: Nicolas Lémery  - Sources and full texts

Commons : Nicolas Lémery  - Collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Jaime Wisniak: Nicolas Lemery . In: Revista CENIC Ciencias Químicas . Volume 36, Number 2, 2005, p. 123.
2. ↑ Jean-Claude Guedon: Protestantisme et Chimie: Le milieu de Intellectuel Nicolas Lemery . In: Isis . Vol. 65, 1974, pp. 212-228 (JSTOR) .
3. ↑ Jaime Wisniak: Nicolas Lemery . In: Revista CENIC Ciencias Químicas . Volume 36, Number 2, 2005, p. 124.
4. ↑ Lemery, Louis in Ilse Jahn: History of Biology. Theories, methods, institutions, short biographies. Nikol VG Spectrum, Hamburg 2004; Page 885. ISBN 3-937872-01-9
5. ↑ Lemeri or Lemery Nicol. In: Johann Heinrich Zedler : Large complete universal lexicon of all sciences and arts . Volume 17, Leipzig 1738, column 60 f.