A new method of chemistry; including the theory and practice of that art: laid down on mechanical principles ... To which is prefix'd a critical history of chemistry and chemists ... / Translated ... by P. Shaw and E. Chambers with additional notes.
- Herman Boerhaave
- Date:
- 1727
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: A new method of chemistry; including the theory and practice of that art: laid down on mechanical principles ... To which is prefix'd a critical history of chemistry and chemists ... / Translated ... by P. Shaw and E. Chambers with additional notes. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![mours, and four qualities, and ufes few other remedies beude phlebotomy, purging, and Cantharides. all™- Now, a man of his genius, and views, feeing fo many more powerful COu‘ remedies produced by chgmiftry ; naturally enough began to imagine, that all might be true, Paracelfus had advanced ; and thus took the contrary byafs, run.counter in every thing to the Galenic fchooi, banifh’d every thing or that kind out of medicine, and reduced the whole art to principles of chemiftry. He tells us he had long obferv*d the impertinence of the fchool-doCtrine, both in philofophy and medicine; and that it was only fit for talk, not aCtion : in which fentiment he was follow’d by the great lord .Verulam, who every where ftiles the peripatetic fchooi Logodadala, as talk¬ ing a deal about the nature of things; but handling nothing. itings. With fuch views he began to write : his firft production was of * fpaw- •waters, printed at Liege in 1624, and procured him a world of efteem. There are abundance of good things in it, and but little of that opiniona- tivenefs, and boafting, which (View’d itfelf in his later works: he had it reprinted the fame year at Cologne, with new experiments. In 1644 he published his fecond piece, Of the humours], againft the humourifts ; a third. Of fevers II ; and a fourth, Of the /ione ff .* which are all the books he publilhed in his life-time. Soon after the publication of the laft, he died, viz,, in the fame year 1644; on the laft day of the year, and the 67th of his life. So that what has been fug^efted by fome eminent chemifts, viz., that Helmont had changed his fentiments, and had got quite other things in view, e’er he died, appears without any ground; as he lived but a little while after Jfinifhing the laft, and all that time continued indifpofed. He was very fober, and regular in his way of living ; of a firm body, and a healthy conftitution. His way of writing is very entertaining : and his ftyle, tho’ not always pure Roman, yet never fails to be elegant. We have been aflured by perfons who knew Helmont, and converfed with him, that he was fcarce known in his neighbourhood *, that he did not apply himfelf to practice ; nor fcarce ever ftirr’d out of doors : only, a few of his next country neighbours, he ufed to give his advice to, gratis. He had been invited to the emperor’s court; as alfo to that of the Elector Palatine, in quality of chymift, and phyfician to thofe princes ; but he de¬ clined both. . As he perceived death drawing nigh him, he call’d his fon, Fr. Mercury ab Helmont • and gave him the following charge : “ Take all my writings, “ the crude as well as the finifh’d ones; and join them together : to your “ care I commit them ; do with them what you think good. For fo it “ has pleafed almighty God, who directs every thing to the beft purpofes.” This fon, with whom the depofit was left, was a perfon of deep thought, and meditation; but a little tainted with enthufiafm ; and in his father’s life-time had ftrolled about with a gang of gypfies. After the father’s de- * De aquis fpadanis. t De huraoribus, || Dc febribus. ft De lithiafi. ceafe.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b30416796_0052.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
