Part 33

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.

(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.

GLAUBER

John Rudolph Glauber, who was born at Carlstadt, in Germany, in 1603, contributed largely to pharmaceutical knowledge, and deserves to be remembered by his many investigations, and perhaps even more for the clear common sense which he brought to bear on his chemical work. For though he retained a confident belief in the dreams of alchemy, he does not appear to have let that belief interfere with his practical labour; and some of his processes were so well devised that they have hardly been altered from his day to ours.

Not much is known of his history except what he himself wrote or what was related of him by his contemporaries. According to his own account he took to chemistry when as a young man he got cured of a troublesome stomach complaint by drinking some mineral waters. Eager to discover what was the essential chemical in those waters to which he owed his health he set to work on his experiments. The result was the discovery of sulphate of soda, which he called “Sal mirabile,” but which all subsequent generations have known as Glauber’s Salts. This, it happens, was the one of his discoveries of which he was not particularly vain, for he supposed that he had only obtained from another source Paracelsus’s sal enixon, which was in fact sulphate of potash. His own account of this discovery is necessarily of pharmaceutical interest. He gives it in his work De Natura Salium, as follows:--

In the course of my youthful travels I was attacked at Vienna with a violent fever known there as the Hungarian disease, to which strangers are especially liable. My enfeebled stomach rejected all food. On the advice of several friends I dragged myself to a certain spring situated about a league from Newstadt. I had brought with me a loaf of bread, but with no hope of being able to eat it. Arrived at the spring I took the loaf from my pocket and made a hole in it so that I could use it as a cup. As I drank the water my appetite returned, and I ended by eating the improvised cup in its turn. I made several visits to the spring and was soon miraculously cured of my illness. I asked what was the nature of the water and was told it was “salpeter-wasser.”

Glauber was twenty-one at that time, and knew nothing of chemistry. Later he analysed the water and got from it, after evaporation, long crystals, which, he says, a superficial observer might confuse with saltpetre; but he soon satisfied himself that it was something quite different. Subsequently he obtained an identical salt from the residue in his retort after distilling marine salt and vitriol to obtain spirit of salt. As already stated, he believed he had produced the “sal enixon” of Paracelsus. But in memory of the benefit he had himself experienced from its use he gave it the title of “sal mirabile.”

In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries the sign of “Glauber’s Head” appears to have been used in this country by some chemical manufacturers. The picture annexed is from one of these signs which was used more than a hundred years ago by Slinger and Son, of York, and is now in the possession of Messrs. Raimes and Co., of that city, who have kindly given me a photograph of it. It is a wooden bust which was once gilded, and presumably presents the traditional likeness of the famous German chemist. ]

This distillation of sulphuric acid with sea-salt, which yielded spirit of salt, or as it is now called hydrochloric acid, was probably Glauber’s principal contribution to the development of chemistry. He observed the gas given off from the salt, and it is a wonder that with his acuteness he did not isolate and describe the element chlorine. He called it the spirit of rectified salt, and described it as a spirit of the colour of fire, which passed into the receiver, and which would dissolve metals and most minerals. He noted that if digested with dephlegmated (concentrated) spirit of wine his spirit of salt formed a layer of oily substance, which was the oil of wine, “an excellent cordial and very agreeable.” He distilled ammonia from bones, and showed how to make sal ammoniac by the addition of sea salt. His sulphate of ammonia, now so largely used as a fertiliser and in the production of other ammonia salts, was known for a long time as “Sal ammoniacum secretum Glauberi.” He made sulphate of copper, and his investigation of the acetum lignorum, now called pyroligneous acid, though he did not claim to have discovered this substance, was of the greatest value. He produced artificial gems, made chlorides of arsenic and zinc, and added considerably to the chemistry of wine and spirit-making.

Glauber worked at many subjects for manufacturers, and sold his secrets in many cases. His enemies asserted that he sold the same secret several times, and that he not unfrequently sold secrets which would not work. It is impossible now to test the truth of these accusations. Probably some of the allegations made against him were due to the fact that those who bought his processes were not as skilful as he was. One secret which he claimed to have discovered he would neither sell nor publish. It was that of the Alkahest, or universal solvent. To make this known might, he feared, “encourage the luxury, pride, and godlessness of poor humanity.”

Oliver Cromwell wrote in an old volume of Glauber’s Alchemy: “This Glauber is an errant knave. I doe bethinke me he speaketh of wonders which cannot be accomplished; but it is lawful for man too the endeavour.”

Glauber complained that he was not appreciated, which was probably true. “I grieve over the ignorance of my contemporaries,” he wrote, “and the ingratitude of men. Men are always envious, wicked, ungrateful. For myself, faithful to the maxim, Ora et Labora, I fulfil my career, do what I can, and await my reward.” Elsewhere he writes, “If I have not done all the good in the world that I should have desired, it has been the perversity of men that has hindered me.” His employees, he says, were unfaithful. Having learned his processes, they became inflated with pride, and left him. Apparently there was a good business to be done in chemical secrets at that time. But Glauber did not give away all he knew, and he found it best to do all his important work himself. “I have learnt by expensive experience,” he wrote, “the truth of the proverb, ‘Wer seine Sachen will gethan haben recht, Muss selbsten seyn Herr und Knecht.’”

Although all Glauber’s books appeared with Latin titles they were written in German.

GOULARD.

Thomas Goulard was a surgeon of Montpellier with rather more than a local reputation. He was counsellor to the king, perpetual mayor of the town of Alet, lecturer and demonstrator royal in surgery, demonstrator royal of anatomy in the College of Physicians, fellow of the Royal Academies of Sciences in Montpellier, Toulouse, Lyons, and Nancy, pensioner of the king and of the province of Languedoc for lithotomy, and surgeon to the Military Hospital of Montpellier. His treatise on “The Extract of Saturn” was published about the middle of the eighteenth century, and his name and the preparations he devised were soon spread all over Europe. White lead and sugar of lead, and litharge as the basis of plasters had been familiar in medical practice for centuries; and Galen and other great authorities had highly commended lead preparations for eye diseases and for general lotions. The preparation of sugar of lead is indicated in the works attributed to Basil Valentine. Goulard’s special merit consisted in the care which he gave to the production of his “Extract of Saturn,” and in his intelligent experiments with it, and its various preparations in the treatment of external complaints.

Goulard made his extract of Saturn by boiling together golden litharge and strong French wine vinegar at a moderate heat for about an hour, stirring all the while, and after cooling drawing off for use the clear supernatant liquor. Diluting this extract by adding 100 drops to a quart of river water with four teaspoonfuls of brandy, made what he called his Vegeto-Mineral Water, which he used for lotions. His cerate of Saturn was made by melting 4 oz. of wax in 11 oz. of olive oil, and incorporating with this 6 lbs. of vegeto-mineral water (containing 4 oz. of extract of Saturn). A cataplasm was made by gently boiling the vegeto-mineral water with crumb of bread. A pomatum was prepared by combining 4 oz. of the extract with a cerate composed of 8 oz. of wax in 18 oz. of rose ointment. This was made stronger or milder as the case might need. There was another pomatum made with the extract of Saturn, sulphur, and alum, for the treatment of itch; and several plasters for rheumatic complaints. Goulard gave full details of the various uses of these applications in inflammations, bruises, wounds, abscesses, erysipelas, ophthalmia, ulcers, cancers, whitlows, tetters, piles, itch, and other complaints. His own experience was supported by that of other practitioners.

In giving the results of his experience thus freely and completely, Goulard was aware of the sacrifice he was making. “I flatter myself,” he says, “that the world is in some measure indebted to me for publishing this medicine, which, if concealed in my own breast, might have turned out much more to my private emolument”; at the same time he did not object to reap some profit from his investigations, if this could be done. At the end of the English translation of his book, a copy of a document is printed addressed to his fellow student of fifty years before, Mr. G. Arnaud, practising as a surgeon in London, engaging to supply to him, and to him only, a sufficient quantity of extract of Saturn made by himself, to be distributed by the said Mr. Arnaud, or by those commissioned by him, over all the dominions of his British Majesty.

SCHEELE.

Karl Wilhelm Scheele is the most famous of pharmacists, and has few equals in scientific history. He was the seventh child of a merchant at Stralsund, then in the possession of Sweden, and was born on December 9th, 1742. He had a fair education and at school was diligent and apt in acquiring knowledge. If he was born with a gift, if his genius was anything more than an immense capacity for taking pains, this aptness was the faculty which distinguished Scheele from other men. He made thousands of experiments and never forgot what he had learned from any one of them; he read such scientific books as he could get, and never needed to refer to them again. His friend Retsius, a pharmacist like himself as a young man, but subsequently Director of the Museum of Lund, has recorded Scheele’s remarkable power in this respect. “When he was at Malmö,” he writes (this was when Scheele was about twenty-four years of age), “he bought as many books as his small pay enabled him to procure. He would read these once or twice, and would then remember all that interested him, and never consulted them again.”

An elder brother of Karl had been apprenticed to an apothecary at Gothenburg, but had died during his apprenticeship. Karl went to this apothecary, a Mr. Bauch, as apprentice at the age of fourteen, and remained there till Bauch sold his business in 1765. Then he went to another apothecary named Kjellström at Malmö. Three years later he was chief assistant to a Mr. Scharenberg at Stockholm. His next move was to Upsala with a Mr. Lokk, who appreciated his assistant and gave him plenty of time for his scientific work.

Lastly, he took the management of a pharmacy at Köping for a widow who owned it, and after an anxious time in clearing the business from debt, he bought the business in 1776 and for the rest of his short life was in fairly comfortable circumstances. Ill-health then pursued him, rheumatism and attacks of melancholy. In the spring of 1786, in the forty-fourth year of his age, after suffering for two months from a slow fever, he died. Two days before his death he married the widow of his predecessor, whose business he had rescued from ruin, so that she might repossess it. A few months later she married again.

That was Scheele’s life as a pharmacist; patient, plodding, conscientious, only moderately successful, and shadowed by many disappointments. The work he accomplished as a scientific chemist would have been marvellous if he had had all his time to do it in; under the actual circumstances in which it was performed it is simply incomprehensible. A bare catalogue of his achievements is all that can be noted here, but it must be remembered that he never announced any discovery until he had checked his first conclusions by repeated and varied tests.