Complete Record - Heirs of Hippocrates No. 408

JEAN BAPTISTE VAN HELMONT (1577-1644) Opuscula medica inaudita. Apud Ludovicum Elzevirium 1648 2nd ed. [8] 110, 115, 88 pp. 19.4 cm.

A Belgian mystic, Helmont was nonetheless the most prominent chemist of the first half of the seventeenth century. Originally an alchemist and a follower of Paracelsus in that his outlook was universal, he himself marks the transition from alchemy to the science of chemistry in the modern sense. This work, first published in 1644 and issued in a corrected second edition in 1648 in conjunction with Ortus medicinae (see No. 409), contains a lengthy treatise on the stone, as well as shorter ones on fevers, the humors of Galen, and the plague.

See Related Record(s): 409

Cited references: Cushing H239; Osler 2932; Waller 4306; Wellcome III, p. 241

Gift of John Martin, M.D.