Jean Baptiste Van Helmont, born at Brussels in 1577, and died at
Vilvorde near that city in 1644, was an erratic genius whose writings
and experiments sometimes astonish us by their lucidity and insight,
and again baffle us by their mysticism and puerility.
Van Helmont was of aristocratic Flemish descent, and possessed some
wealth. He was a voracious student and a brilliant lecturer. At the
University of Louvain, however, where he spent several years, he
refused to take any degree because he believed that such academic
distinctions only ministered to pride. He resolved at the same time
to devote his life to the service of the poor, and with this in view
he made over his property to his sister, and set himself to study
medicine. His gift of exposition was so great that the authorities of
the University insisted on his acceptance of the chair of Surgery,
though that was the branch of medical practice he knew least about, and
though it was contrary to the statutes of the faculty to appoint a
person as Professor not formally qualified.
[Illustration: J. B. VAN HELMONT. 1577-1644.
(From an engraving in the Bibliothèque Nationale, Paris.)
]
For a time things went well, but Van Helmont got tired of medical
teaching before the University became tired of him. The particular
occasion which disgusted him with medical science was that he
contracted the itch, and though he consulted many eminent physicians
could not get cured of it. He came to the conclusion that the pretended
art of healing was a fraud, and he consequently resolved to shake the
dust of it from his feet, after he had recovered from the weakening
effects of the purgatives which had been prescribed for his complaint.
Then he set forth on his travels, and in the course of them he met with
a quack who cured him of his itch by means of sulphur and mercury.
After this he became a violent anti-Galenist. He studied the works of
Paracelsus, and after some years came back to his native country full
of ideas and phantasies.
By marrying a wealthy woman Van Helmont became independent, and his
scientific career now commenced. He erected and fitted a laboratory at
Vilvorde, and devoted his time and skill to the study of chemistry,
medicine, and philosophy. He described himself as “Medicus per Ignem,”
and was one of the most earnest believers in the possibility of
discovering the philosopher’s stone, and the elixir of life. Indeed he
claimed that he had actually transmuted mercury into gold, and by his
medical compounds it is alleged that he performed such miraculous cures
that the Jesuits actually brought him before the Inquisition.
The advance in chemistry for which he is most famous was the discovery
of carbonic acid gas, and the first steps in the recognition of the
various kinds of gases. Previous to his discovery chemists had no clear
perception of a distinction between the various gases; they reckoned
them all as air. Geber and other predecessors of Van Helmont had
observed that certain vapours were incorporated in material bodies,
and they regarded these as the spirits, or souls, of those bodies. Van
Helmont was the first actually to separate and examine one of these
vapours. He tracked this gas through many of the compounds in which
it is combined or formed: he got it from limestone, from potashes,
from burning coal, from certain natural mineral waters, and from the
fermentation of bread, wine, and beer. He found that it could be
compressed in wines and thus yield the sparkling beverages we know so
well. He also observed that it extinguished flame, and asphyxiated
animals. He alludes to other kinds of vapour, but does not precisely
define them. The carbon dioxide he named “gas sylvestre.”
This was the first use of the term gas. “Hunc spiritum, hactenus
ignotum, novo nomine gas voco.” (I call this spirit, heretofore
unknown, by the new name gas.) What suggested this name to him is not
certain. Some have supposed that it was a modification of the Flemish,
_geest_, spirit; by others it is traced to the verb _gaschen_, to boil,
or ferment; and by many its derivation from chaos is assumed.
His physiology was a modification of that of Paracelsus. An Archeus
within ruled the organism with the assistance of sub-archei for
different parts of the body. Ferments stirred these archei into
activity. In this way the processes of digestion were accounted for.
The vital spirit, a kind of gas, causes the pulsation of the arteries.
The Soul of Man he assigned to the stomach. The exact locality of
this important adjunct was a subject of keen discussion among the
philosophers of that age. Van Helmont’s conclusive argument for the
stomach as its habitation was the undoubted fact that trouble or bad
news had the effect of destroying the appetite.