In 1577, or just 36 years after the death of Paracelsus, his great admirer and disciple Van Helmont was born of a noble family at Brussels. He studied medicine con trary to the inclination of his relations, was early distin guished for his extensive reading and great knowledge, and was created doctor of medicine at the age of 22, hav ing previously read public lectures on surgery at Lo vain. Soon after, happening to get a slight itch, and perceiving that the regular treatment had no effect upon it, but that sulphur speedily removed it, he became in consequence disgusted with medicine, renounced the study, divided his fortune among his relations, and left his country with an intention never more to return. He spent ten years in travelling ; and at last, having acquir ed a knowledge of chemistry, he became violently at tached to it, and resolved to devote to it the remainder of his life. In 1609, he married and returned to \Vil woord, where he employed himself in making chemical experiments, and in applying that science to medicine. His publications soon gave hint celebrity, and he was more than once invited to the court of Vienna. Ile died in 1644, at the age of 67. Like his predecessor Paracel sus, he boasted that he was in possession of the univer sal remedy, to which he gave the name of alkahest. His chemical discoveries were numerous, and justly entitle him to distinction.
Van Ilehnont may be considered as the last of the al chyntists. His death completed the disgrace of the uni versal medicine, which afterwards, like the philosophers' stone, was considered by all rational chemists as a palpa ble absurdity. His contemporaries, and those who im mediately succeeded hint, if we except Crollius and a few other blind admirers of Paracelsus, attended solely to the improvement of chemistry, and the refutation of the absurd tenets of the alchymists. The chief of them were Agricola, Beguin, Glaser, Erkern, Glauber, Kin kel, Boyle, Ste.
The foundations of the alchymistical system being thus shaken, the facts which had been collected tumbled into a heap of rubbish, and chemistry was left without any fixed principles, to wander about in the dark, destitute of an object. At last, there arose a man thoroughly ac quainted with the whole of these facts, capable of ar ranging them, and of perceiving the important purposes to which they might be applied, and able to point out the proper objects to which the researches of chemists ought to be directed. This man was Beecher. Ile accom plished the arduous task in his work, entitled Physica Subterranea, published at Frankfort in the year 1669. The publication of this hook forms a very important era in the history of chemistry. It then escaped for ever from the trammels of alchymy, and became the science which we find it at present.
Thus it appears, that the word chemistry has had at dif ferent times no less than five meanings. It first signi fied natural philosophy ; afterwards it was restricted to the art of working metals ; at a later period it meant the are of making gold ; at a still later period, the discovery of a universal medicine was also included under it ; and, last of all, in 1669, it became the science which investi gates the insensible motions of bodies. Thus, after a va
riety of transformations, it stopped at last, and now com prehends under it precisely one-half of its original signi fication. At first it was the name of the whole of na tural science, whereas now it is only the name of one of the two branches into which science is divided.
John Joachim Beecher, to whom the honour of laying the foundation of the science of chemistry belongs, was born at Spires in 1625, and seems to have been of Jew ish extraction. He was first a professor of medicine, then physician to the Elector of Mentz, and afterwards to the Elector of Bavaria. Towards the end of his life, he went to England, and died in London in 1682, as is suspected, in great poverty. His writings testify with what success he applied himself to the study of chemis try.
Ernest Stahl, his disciple, and the commentator of the .Physica Subterranea, gave the science a degree of order and extension which raised it in some respects to a level with mechanical philosophy, and secured to himself the highest and most exalted reputation. This philosopher, a German, first physician to the King of Prussia, profes sor of medicine and of chemistry, who was born in the year 1660, seems to have been actuated front his very infancy by a violent passion for chemistry. At the age of fifteen he could repeat, by heart, the whole of the Chemia Philosophica of Barnerus, at that time the most popular book on the subject. Ile attached himself par ticularly to the writings of Beecher. whom he resembled in activity and brilliancy of imagination, and far surpass ed in precision and judgment. Beecher's theory, in his hands, was new modelled and simplified. He explained the nature of combustion, and reduced the phenomena of chemistry under a certain number of general heads. His system forms as complete a whole, and has as im posing an aspect, as any which has hitherto been pro mulgated. It was the result of very cautious researches, and was elucidated and confirmed by satisfactory expe riment. No wonder, then, that its author attracted ge neral admiration, and that he was dignified with the title of the sublime Stahl. His theory consisted in supposing, that a certain substance, called nhlogiaton, forms a part of all combustible bodies ; that its separation constitutes fire, while its various combinations produce most of the other phenomena of chemistry. it was first soon after the commencement of the 18th century; and Stahl's Fundamenta Chemic were first published in 1721. For a period of almost fifty years after the appearance of that book, the sole object of chemists was to confirm and extend the theory of the author. And it applied Sr. happily to their different discoveries,—enabled than in many cases to foretcl the event,—and assisted them so much to penetrate into the still unexplored recesses of nature, that we have no reason to be surprised at the ad miration which it excited,—at the attachment which che mists displayed for it,—and the violence with which they supported it.