Joan Baptista Van Helmont: Reformer of Science and Medicine

by Walter Pagel

• ISBN13: 9780521526555
• ISBN10: 0521526558
• Edition: Reprint
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2002-06-27
• Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Summary

Only comparatively have historians begun to recognize the importance and influence of Joan Baptista Van Helmont (1579-1644) in the history of medicine and chemistry. Van Helmont's theories on the nature of life, biological time, physiology and disease, the structure of matter, and the processes of chemical change are veiled in his writings by a brand of Renaissance mysticism rendering them obscure to the modern reader. His organic conception of the natural world, together with his belief in alchemy and astral forces, has resulted in a predominantly unsympathetic attitude among historians of science, by whom he is generally regarded as a mystic purveying an unpalatable and inherently 'unscientific' amalgam of medicine and philosophy. Attitudes are now changing. Thinkers of the Van Helmont type are at last receiving the sympathetic attention they deserve. Dr Pagel is a pioneer in this field, and he now demonstrates that by painstaking analysis it is possible to appreciate the creative insights of a figure like Van Helmont. Dr Pagel's book is a model of its kind, and it is the culmination of many years of reflection on the topics discussed.

Table of Contents

Preface	ix
Abbreviations	xi
The life of Van Helmont in the light of his endeavour	1	(18)
New aims: the hunt for perfect knowledge	19	(16)
The nature of nature	35	(61)
Origins and causes: the ignorance of Aristotle	35	(11)
Stars as light signals: the rejection of microcosmic analogy	46	(3)
The elements: water and air	49	(11)
The discovery of gas	60	(11)
Odours	71	(8)
Fermentation	79	(8)
Blas	87	(9)
Biological ideas	96	(45)
Archeus: the harmonious blacksmith	96	(6)
Magnum oportet and middle-life: digestion, corruption, and disease	102	(4)
On time, duration, and lastingness	106	(12)
The immanence of form in ``disposed'' matter and natural perception	118	(11)
The discovery of gastric acid digestion	129	(12)
The ontological conception of disease	141	(58)
Fever, venesection, and purging	154	(8)
``The madness of catarrh''	162	(9)
Asthma and pleurisy	171	(16)
The anatomy of urine and urinary calculus	187	(8)
Principles of medicinal action	195	(4)
Final assessment	199	(10)
Bibliography of Van Helmont	209	(6)
Index	215