Jean-Baptiste van Helmont

Jean-Baptiste van Helmont is a Chimiste, Physiologiste and Belgian Médecin born with Brussels the January 12th 1580 and died in Vilvorde the December 30th 1644. He wrote all his Latin work.

History

Chemist, physiologist and doctor brabançon of Latin language, Jean-Baptiste van Helmont had the great merit to have established a bridge between the Alchimie and the Chimie, and in spite of its mystical inclinations and its belief in the Philosopher's stone, it respected the teaching of William Harvey and that of Galileo. He was a meticulous observer and a precise experimenter.

He attacks the Four elements, constant in particular by Aristote. He writes on this subject that The Feu is neither an element, nor a substance; the flame is a lit smoke. Moreover, the chemists of its time, he considered that the ground is not an element: it results from the transformation of the Eau. It showed its assumption while making push a young person Saule in a wood case containing a quantity of well defined Ground. After watering, during five years, with rainwater filtered on sieve, it observed that the weight of the tree had increased by 76 kg, while that of the ground had decreased only by 57 G. The ground not having shown any significant variation of weight, it is thus the water which changed into wood and of roots, i.e. in solid substances which one described as “ground”.

Although he was not opposed to the idea of Transmutation, he refuted the experiment which consisted in “transmuting” the Fer into Cuivre by stay in a blue vitriol solution (copper sulfate) by proving that vitriol contains the element coppers.

" Precursor of chemistry pneumatique" , like Ferdinand Hoefer, Van Helmont writes it revealed in a scientific way the existence of “gases”, as it names them, and recognized several of them. It identified one of them, “woodland gas” (Carbonic gas) which resulted from the combustion of the coal, or of the action of the Vinaigre on certain stones, or of the Fermentation of the juice of Raisin. For Van Helmont, the gas constitutes the whole of “exhalations” whose air is the réceptable.

Physiologist, it considered that the Digestion, the food and the movement was due to leavens which transformed, in six stages, the food out of living matter. For Van Helmont any substance is made of water, paramount element, and of an imponderable leaven (concept close to the vital Force), spiritual principle which exerts its action under the influence of a spiritual force, Archée. Doctor, it let himself guide by chemical principles for the choice of the remedies and introduced, for example, the use of the Alcali to correct the excessive acidity of the digestive leavens.

Its complete works were published in 1648 by his/her son Franz Merkurius: Ortus medicinæ, vel opera and opuscula omnia . ghgf

Works

1621 - Of magnetica vulnerum curatione. Disputatio, countered opinionem D. Ioan. Roberti (...) in brevi sweated anatome sub censurae specie exaratam , Paris
1642 - Febrium doctrina inaudita , Antverpiae
1644 - Opuscula medica inaudit
1648 - Ortus medicinae, id east Initia physicae inaudita

External bond

Biography of Jean-Baptiste van Helmont
Steffen Ducheyne, Joan Baptist Van Helmont and the Question off Experimental Modernism, Physis: Rivista Internazionale di Storia della Scienza, vol.43, 2005, pp. 305-332.

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