Jan Baptist van Helmont | |
|---|---|
 Portrait of van Helmont byMary Beale | |
| Born | 12 January 1580[a] |
| Died | 30 December 1644(1644-12-30) (aged 64) |
| Education | University of Leuven |
| Known for | Pneumatic chemistry |
| Scientific career | |
| Fields | Chemistry,physiology,medicine |
| Academic advisors | Martin Delrio[1] |
Jan Baptist van Helmont[b] (/ˈhɛlmɒnt/HEL-mont,[2]Dutch:[ˈjɑmbɑpˈtɪstfɑnˈɦɛlmɔnt]; 12 January 1580[a] – 30 December 1644) was achemist,physiologist, andphysician fromBrussels. He worked during the years just afterParacelsus and the rise ofiatrochemistry, and is sometimes considered to be "the founder ofpneumatic chemistry".[3] Van Helmont is remembered today largely for his 5-year willow tree experiment, his introduction of the word "gas" (from the Greek wordchaos) into the vocabulary of science, and his ideas onspontaneous generation.
Jan Baptist van Helmont was the youngest of five children of Maria (van) Stassaert and Christiaen van Helmont, a public prosecutor and Brussels council member, who had married in theSint-Goedele church in 1567.[4] He was educated atLeuven, and after ranging restlessly from one science to another and finding satisfaction in none, turned to medicine. He interrupted his studies, and for a few years he traveled throughSwitzerland,Italy,France,Germany, andEngland.[5]
Returning to his own country, van Helmont obtained a medical degree in 1599.[6] He practiced atAntwerp at the time of the great plague in 1605, after which he wrote a book titledDe Peste[7] (On Plague), which was reviewed byNewton in 1667.[8] In 1609 he finally obtained his doctoral degree in medicine. The same year he married Margaret van Ranst, who was of a wealthy noble family. Van Helmont and Margaret lived inVilvoorde, near Brussels, and had six or seven children.[4] The inheritance of his wife enabled him to retire early from his medical practice and occupy himself with chemical experiments until his death on 30 December 1644.
Van Helmont was a disciple of the mystic andalchemist,Paracelsus, though he scornfully repudiated the errors of most contemporary authorities, including Paracelsus. On the other hand, he engaged in thenew learning based onexperimentation that was producing men likeSantorio Santori,William Harvey,Galileo Galilei, andFrancis Bacon.
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Van Helmont was a careful observer ofnature; his analysis of data gathered in his experiments suggests that he had a concept of the conservation of mass. He was an early experimenter in seeking to determine how plants gain mass.
For Van Helmont,air andwater were the two primitive elements. Fire he explicitly denied to be anelement, nor could earth be called a true element because, he argued, it could be reduced to water.[5]
Van Helmont is regarded as the founder ofpneumatic chemistry,[3] as he was the first to understand that there are gases distinct in kind from atmospheric air and furthermore invented the word "gas".[9]He derived the wordgas from the Greek wordchaos (χᾰ́ος).
He perceived that his "gas sylvestre" (carbon dioxide) given off by burning charcoal, was the same as that produced byfermentingmust, a gas which sometimes renders the air of caves unbreathable.
Van Helmont wrote extensively on the subject of digestion. InOriatrike or Physick Refined (1662, an English translation ofOrtus medicinae), van Helmont considered earlier ideas on the subject, such as food being digested through the body's internal heat. But if that were so, he asked, how could cold-blooded animals live? His own opinion was that digestion was aided by a chemical reagent, or "ferment", within the body, such as inside the stomach. Harré suggests that van Helmont's theory was "very near to our modern concept of an enzyme".[10]
Van Helmont proposed and described six different stages of digestion.[11]
Helmont's experiment on a willow tree has been considered among the earliest quantitative studies on plant nutrition and growth and as a milestone in the history of biology. The experiment was only published posthumously inOrtus Medicinae (1648) and may have been inspired by similar experiments by Santorio, published inArs de statica medicina (1614). Helmont grew a willow tree and measured the amount of soil, the weight of the tree and the water he added. After five years the plant had gained about 164 lbs (74 kg). Since the amount of soil was nearly the same as it had been when he started his experiment (it lost only 57 grams), he deduced that the tree's weight gain had come entirely from water.[12][13][14][15]
Van Helmont described a recipe for thespontaneous generation of mice (a piece of dirty cloth plus wheat for 21 days) and scorpions (basil, placed between two bricks and left in sunlight). His notes suggest he may have attempted to do these things.[16]
Although a faithful Catholic, he incurred the suspicion of the Church by his tractDe magnetica vulnerum curatione (1621), againstJean Roberti, since he could not explain the effects of his 'miraculous cream'. The Jesuits therefore argued that Helmont used 'magic' and convinced the inquisition to scrutinize his writings. It was the lack of scientific evidence that drove Roberti to this step.[17] His works were collected and edited by his sonFranciscus Mercurius van Helmont and published byLodewijk Elzevir inAmsterdam asOrtus medicinae, vel opera et opuscula omnia ("The Origin of Medicine, or Complete Works") in 1648.[9][18]Ortus medicinae was based on, but not restricted to, the material ofDageraad ofte Nieuwe Opkomst der Geneeskunst ("Daybreak, or the New Rise of Medicine"), which was published in 1644 in Van Helmont's native Dutch. His son Frans's writings,Cabbalah Denudata (1677) andOpuscula philosophica (1690) are a mixture of theosophy, mysticism and alchemy.[5]
Over and above thearcheus, he believed that there is the sensitivesoul which is the husk or shell of the immortal mind. Beforethe Fall the archeus obeyed the immortal mind and was directly controlled by it, but at the Fall men also received the sensitive soul and with it lost immortality, for when it perishes the immortal mind can no longer remain in the body.[5]
Van Helmont described thearcheus as "aura vitalis seminum, vitae directrix" ("The chief Workman [Archeus] consists of the conjoyning of the vitall air, as of the matter, with the seminal likeness, which is the more inward spiritual kernel, containing the fruitfulness of the Seed; but the visible Seed is onely the husk of this.").[19]
In addition to the archeus, van Helmont believed in other governing agencies resembling the archeus which were not always clearly distinguished from it. From these he invented the termblas (motion), defined as the "vis motus tam alterivi quam localis" ("twofold motion, to wit, locall, and alterative"), that is, natural motion and motion that can be altered or voluntary. Of blas there were several kinds, e.g. blas humanum (blas of humans), blas of stars and blas meteoron (blas of meteors); of meteors he said "constare gas materiâ et blas efficiente" ("Meteors do consist of their matter Gas, and their efficient cause Blas, as well the Motive, as the altering").[5]
Van Helmont "had frequent visions throughout his life and laid great stress upon them".[20] His choice of a medical profession has been attributed to a conversation with the angelRaphael,[21] and some of his writings described imagination as a celestial, and possibly magical, force.[22] Though Van Helmont was skeptical of specific mystical theories and practices, he refused to discount magical forces as explanations for certain natural phenomena. This stance, reflected in a 1621 paper on sympathetic principles,[23] may have contributed to his prosecution, and subsequent house arrest several years later, in 1634, which lasted a few weeks. The trial, however, never came to a conclusion. He was neither sentenced nor rehabilitated.[24]
In 2003, the historianLisa Jardine proposed that a portrait held in the collections of theNatural History Museum, London, traditionally identified asJohn Ray, might representRobert Hooke.[25] Jardine's hypothesis was subsequently disproved byWilliam B. Jensen of theUniversity of Cincinnati[26] and by the German researcher Andreas Pechtl ofJohannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, who showed that the portrait in fact depicts van Helmont.
In 1875, he was honoured by Belgian botanistAlfred Cogniaux (1841–1916), who named a genus of flowering plants from South America,Helmontia (from theCucurbitaceae family).[27]
One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in thepublic domain: Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Helmont, Jean Baptiste van".Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 13 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. pp. 249–250.| International | |
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