Disease of any part represents a strike on the
part of the local Archeus, who refuses to work. Though full of fanciful
ideas, Van Helmont had the experimental spirit and was the first chemist
to discover the diversity of gases. Like his teacher, he was in revolt
against the faculty, and he has bitter things to say of physicians. He
got into trouble with the Church about the magnetic cure of wounds, as
no fewer than twenty-seven propositions incompatible with the Catholic
faith were found in his pamphlet (Ferguson). The Philosophus per ignem,
Toparcha in Merode, Royenborch, as he is styled in certain of his
writings, is not an easy man to tackle. I show the title-page of the
"Ortus Medicinae," the collection of his works by his son. As with the
pages of Paracelsus, there are many gems to be dug out. The counterblast
against bleeding was a useful protest, and to deny in toto its utility
in fever required courage--a quality never lacking in the Father of
Modern Chemistry, as he has been called.
A man of a very different type, a learned academic, a professor
of European renown, was Daniel Sennert of Wittenberg, the first to
introduce the systematic teaching of chemistry into the curriculum,
and who tried to harmonize the Galenists and Paracelsians.
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