Van Helmont
ORDERBY-NAME: Helmont, Jan Baptista Van
OTHER-NAME: Helmont, Joan Baptista van; Helmont, Johannes Baptista van
BIRTH: 12th January 1579; Brussels, Belgium
DEATH: 30th December 1644; nr Vilvorde, Belgium
CATEGORY: Science; Medicine
DISCIPLINE: Chemistry; Physiology
ASSESSMENT: Although his work was wrapped in alchemical and occultist gobbledygook, Helmont moved scientific investigation towards the quantitative-based activity it is today. His book Ortus Medicinae marks the transition from alchemy to chemistry
LANGUAGE: Latin, Flemish
EDUCATION: Louvain University (M.D: 1599)
ACHIEVEMENT: He discovered and named ‘gas’ and identified what would become known as carbon dioxide.
MAJOR-WORK: Ortus medicinae [his collected medical works] (posthumous: 1648)
PARENTS: Christian van Helmont; Marie de Stassart
SPOUSE: Margerita van Ranst
SIBLINGS: Not known
CHILDREN: Franciscus Mercurius and several daughters
DETAILS: Helmont born into the Flemish landed gentry: his father was a state councilor of Brabant.
After studying a wide variety of subjects (from chemistry to law to geography), after qualifying as a doctor, Helmont became dissatisfied with the contemporary quasi-mystic nature of science and medicine and the influence of alchemy and magic.
To further knowledge,m between 1600 and 1605 he visited Switzerland, Italy, France and England (where he met and talked with Queen Elizabeth*).
After successful work ruing an epidemic in Antwerp, he turned down several tempting offers from Germany and in 1609 settled in Vilvorde (Belgium) for seven years’ research on his own.
Almost immediately he became involved in a dispute which would dog him for the rest of his life. The Protestant Rudolf Geoclenius claimed to have discovered an ointment which, if applied to the weapon, would cure the wound it had caused This brought him into conflict with the Jesuits who attacked him for heresy. When Helmont published a paper basically in sympathy with Geoclenius and in 1625 was condemned by the Inquisition. The Medicine and Theology faculties of Louvain University also attacked him.
He spent 1635 under house arrest and proceedings against him only ended in 1642, two years before his death.
Helmont’s approach to scientific investigation was novel for the times, as he used a balance and concentrated on quantification and measurement. He examined smoke left after the burning of different materials and concluded each smoke was different (and named the various kinds of smoke ‘gases’): carbon dioxide, carbon monoxide (from burning charcoal, fermenting wine, mineral water etc.), an explosive gas given off by ignited gunpowder and a ‘vital’ gas in blood.
He discovered that materials dissolved by acid were not destroyed and could be recovered, and that a metal can be precipitated out of solution by another metal.
Helmont regarded water as the principle constituent of matter and tested the theory by growing a willow tree for five years in a measured quantity of earth. With the addition only of water the tree increased in weight by 164 pounds, while the soil weight decreased by only a few ounces.
Helmont also improved several medical uses of chemicals and revealed the sedative effects of ether, as well as noting the value of specific gravity as a diagnostic tool. He also suggested use of the pendulum as a measurement of time and observed that the length of the pendulum swing always remained constant.
He developed an air thermometer-barometer, and recognized the influence, on the movement of a projectile through the air, of air resistance, bullet size, amount of gunpowder used, and distance to target.
Helmont led the way in debunking the old ‘humoral’ theory of disease: caused by an imbalance of the body’s four ‘humors’ (cold, heat, ?????), recognizing that each disease was an entity in itself, triggered by an external agent.
This led to the modern view of disease as the result of specific pathogen activity acting together with the body’s local environmental conditions.
This view brought him to reject contemporary treatments such as bloodletting, purging and to suggest remedies that took into account the disease, the organ affected, and the cause.
In his work on digestion and nutrition, Helmont was one of the first to apply chemical principles to the study of physiological problems, especially the idea of treating acid indigestion with alkali.
What makes Helmont’s work difficult to understand (and, in many cases, to accept as a genuine advance), is the way he often expressed his scientific views in terms of the occult and the cosmological. He introduced a number of supernatural agencies each of which protected a part of the body. Spirit and matter were the same thing, and gas linked the two.
Helmont also believed in the philosopher’s stone which turned other metals into gold (and claimed to have once turned mercury into gold).
Nevertheless, in whatever philosophical or religious language, he succeeded in identifying acid as the basic digestive factor in all animals, and in explaining the precipitation of metals in scientific terms.
In 1642, two years before his death, he received official approval for his treatise on fevers.
EXTRA-CONNECTIONS: He influenced the work of Stensen*.
He was influenced by the chemistry of Paracelsus* and the scientific approach of Nicholas of Cusa*
He corresponded with Mersenne*
ONELINER: Van Helmont, bridge between alchemy and chemistry
BIBLIOGRAPHY:
Dictionary of Scientific Biography
Encyclopedia Britannic
Catholic Encyclopedia
Walter Pagel, "The Life of Van Helmont in the Light of his Endeavor," Chapter 1 of Johan Baptista Van Helmont: Reformer of Science and Medicine, (Cambridge, 1982).