Jan Baptist van Helmont

Jan Baptist van Helmont
Jan Baptist van Helmont (left) and his son Franciscus-Mercurius from the Ortus medicinae (1648)
Born	12 January 1580 Brussels, Spanish Netherlands (present-day Belgium)
Died	Vilvoorde, Spanish Netherlands (present-day Flemish Brabant, Belgium)
Fields	Chemistry, physiology, medicine
Education	University of Leuven
Academic advisors	Martin Delrio
Known for	Pneumatic chemistry
Influences	Paracelsus
Influenced	Franciscus Sylvius

Jan Baptist van Helmont (/ˈhɛlmɒnt/; Dutch: [ˈɦɛlmɔnt]; 12 January 1580 – 30 December 1644) was a chemist, physiologist, and physician from the Spanish Netherlands. He worked during the years just after Paracelsus and the rise of iatrochemistry, and is sometimes considered to be "the founder of pneumatic chemistry". Van Helmont is remembered today largely for his ideas on spontaneous generation, his 5-year willow tree experiment, and his introduction of the word "gas" (from the Greek word chaos) into the vocabulary of science.

His name is also found rendered as Jan-Baptiste van Helmont, Johannes Baptista van Helmont, Johann Baptista von Helmont, Joan Baptista van Helmont, and other minor variants switching between von and van.

Early life and education

Jan Baptist van Helmont was the youngest of five children of Maria (van) Stassaert and Christiaen van Helmont, a public prosecutor and Brussels council member, who had married in the Sint-Goedele church in 1567. He was educated at Leuven, and after ranging restlessly from one science to another and finding satisfaction in none, turned to medicine. He interrupted his studies, and for a few years he traveled through Switzerland, Italy, France, Germany, and England.

Returning to his own country, van Helmont obtained a medical degree in 1599. He practiced at Antwerp at the time of the great plague in 1605, after which he wrote a book titled De Peste (On Plague), which was reviewed by Newton in 1667. In 1609 he finally obtained his doctoral degree in medicine. The same year he married Margaret van Ranst, who was of a wealthy noble family. Van Helmont and Margaret lived in Vilvoorde, near Brussels, and had six or seven children. The inheritance of his wife enabled him to retire early from his medical practice and occupy himself with chemical experiments until his death on 30 December 1644.

Career as chemistry pioneer

The Roman tower of the old church in Neder-Over-Heembeek and house where van Helmont performed an alchemical transmutation. Drawing by Leon Van Dievoet, 1963.

File:Portrait of J.B. van Helmont, Aufgang...1683 Wellcome L0003194.jpg

Posthumous portrait of van Helmont

File:JB van Helmont statue, Brussels.JPG

Monument for Jan Baptist van Helmont in Brussels

Portrait of van Helmont by Mary Beale, c.1674, misidentified for a time as Robert Hooke

Van Helmont is regarded as the founder of pneumatic chemistry, as he was the first to understand that there are gases distinct in kind from atmospheric air and furthermore invented the word "gas". He perceived that his "gas sylvestre" (carbon dioxide) given off by burning charcoal, was the same as that produced by fermenting must, a gas which sometimes renders the air of caves unbreathable. For Van Helmont, air and water were the two primitive elements. Fire he explicitly denied to be an element, and earth is not one because it can be reduced to water.

On the one hand, Van Helmont was a disciple of the mystic and alchemist, Paracelsus, though he scornfully repudiated the errors of most contemporary authorities, including Paracelsus. On the other hand, he engaged in the new learning based on experimentation that was producing men like William Harvey, Galileo Galilei and Francis Bacon. Van Helmont was a careful observer of nature; his analysis of data gathered in his experiments suggests that he had a concept of the conservation of mass. He was an early experimenter in seeking to determine how plants gain mass.

The Willow tree experiment

Helmont's experiment on a willow tree has been considered among the earliest quantitative studies on plant nutrition and growth and as a milestone in the history of biology. The experiment was only published posthumously in Ortus Medicinae (1648) and may have been inspired by Nicholas of Cusa who wrote on the same idea in De staticis experimentis (1450). Helmont grew a willow tree and measured the amount of soil, the weight of the tree and the water he added. After five years the plant had gained about 164 lbs (74 kg). Since the amount of soil was nearly the same as it had been when he started his experiment (it lost only 57 grams), he deduced that the tree's weight gain had come entirely from water.

Religious and philosophical opinions

Although a faithful Catholic, he incurred the suspicion of the Church by his tract De magnetica vulnerum curatione (1621), against Jean Roberti, which was thought to derogate from some of the miracles. His works were collected and edited by his son Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont and published by Lodewijk Elzevir in Amsterdam as Ortus medicinae, vel opera et opuscula omnia ("The Origin of Medicine, or Complete Works") in 1648. Ortus medicinae was based on, but not restricted to, the material of Dageraad ofte Nieuwe Opkomst der Geneeskunst ("Daybreak, or the New Rise of Medicine"), which was published in 1644 in Van Helmont's native Dutch. His son Frans's writings, Cabbalah Denudata (1677) and Opuscula philosophica (1690) are a mixture of theosophy, mysticism and alchemy.

Over and above the archeus, he believed that there is the sensitive soul which is the husk or shell of the immortal mind. Before the Fall the archeus obeyed the immortal mind and was directly controlled by it, but at the Fall men also received the sensitive soul and with it lost immortality, for when it perishes the immortal mind can no longer remain in the body.

Van Helmont described the archeus as "aura vitalis seminum, vitae directrix" ("The chief Workman [Archeus] consists of the conjoyning of the vitall air, as of the matter, with the seminal likeness, which is the more inward spiritual kernel, containing the fruitfulness of the Seed; but the visible Seed is onely the husk of this.").

In addition to the archeus, van Helmont believed in other governing agencies resembling the archeus which were not always clearly distinguished from it. From these he invented the term blas (motion), defined as the "vis motus tam alterivi quam localis" ("twofold motion, to wit, locall, and alterative"), that is, natural motion and motion that can be altered or voluntary. Of blas there were several kinds, e.g. blas humanum (blas of humans), blas of stars and blas meteoron (blas of meteors); of meteors he said "constare gas materiâ et blas efficiente" ("Meteors do consist of their matter Gas, and their efficient cause Blas, as well the Motive, as the altering").

Van Helmont "had frequent visions throughout his life and laid great stress upon them". His choice of a medical profession has been attributed to a conversation with the angel Raphael., and some of his writings described imagination as a celestial, and possibly magical, force. Though Van Helmont was skeptical of specific mystical theories and practices, he refused to discount magical forces as explanations for certain natural phenomena. This stance, reflected in a 1621 paper on sympathetic principles, may have contributed to his prosecution and subsequent house arrest.

Observations on digestion

Van Helmont wrote extensively on the subject of digestion. In Oriatrike or Physick Refined (1662, an English translation of Ortus medicinae), van Helmont considered earlier ideas on the subject, such as food being digested through the body's internal heat. But if that were so, he asked, how could cold-blooded animals live? His own opinion was that digestion was aided by a chemical reagent, or "ferment", within the body, such as inside the stomach. Harré suggests that van Helmont's theory was "very near to our modern concept of an enzyme".

Van Helmont proposed and described six different stages of digestion.

Disputed portrait

In 2003, the historian Lisa Jardine proposed that a portrait held in the collections of the Natural History Museum, London, traditionally identified as John Ray, might represent Robert Hooke. Jardine's hypothesis was subsequently disproved by William Jensen of the University of Cincinnati and by the German researcher Andreas Pechtl of Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz, who showed that the portrait in fact depicts van Helmont.

See also

• Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont, his son
• George Thomson (physician) (c. 1619–1676), English physician and notable advocate of Helmontian medicine
• Timeline of hydrogen technologies
• Pneumatic chemistry

Further reading

• Steffen Ducheyne, Johannes Baptista Van Helmonts Experimentele Aanpak: Een Poging tot Omschrijving, in: Gewina, Tijdschrift voor de Geschiedenis der Geneeskunde, Natuurwetenschappen, Wiskunde en Techniek, 1, vol. 30, 2007, pp. 11–25. (Dutch)
• Friedrich Giesecke: Die Mystik Joh. Baptist von Helmonts, Leitmeritz, 1908 (Dissertation), Digitalisat. (German)
• Eugene M. Klaaren, Religious Origins of Modern Science, Eerdmans, 1977, ISBN 0-8028-1683-5.
• Moore, F. J. (1918). A History of Chemistry, New York: McGraw-Hill.
• Pagel, Walter (2002). Joan Baptista van Helmont: Reformer of Science and Medicine, Cambridge University Press.
• Redgrove, I. M. L. and Redgrove, H. Stanley (2003). Joannes Baptista van Helmont: Alchemist, Physician and Philosopher, Kessinger Publishing.
• Johann Werfring: Die Einbildungslehre Johann Baptista van Helmonts. In: Johann Werfring: Der Ursprung der Pestilenz. Zur Ätiologie der Pest im loimografischen Diskurs der frühen Neuzeit, Wien: Edition Praesens, 1999, ISBN 3-7069-0002-5, pp. 206–222. (German)
• The Moldavian prince and scholar, Dimitrie Cantemir, wrote a biography of Helmont, which is now difficult to locate. It is cited in Debus, Allen G. (2002) The Chemical Philosophy: Paracelsian science and medicine in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Courier Dover Publications, ISBN 0486421759 on pages 311 and 312, as Catemir, Dimitri (Demetrius) (1709); Ioannis Baptistae Van Helmont physices universalis doctrine et christianae fidei congrua et necessaria philosophia. Wallachia. Debus refers to a suggestion of his colleague William H. McNeill for this information and cites Badaru, Dan (1964); Filozofia lui Dilmitrie Cantemir. Editura Academici Republicii Popular Romine, Bucharest pages 394–410 for further information. Debus further remarks that the work of Cantemir contains merely a paraphrase and selection of "Ortus Medicinae", but it made the views of van Helmont available to Eastern Europe.
• Nature 433, 197 (20 January 2005) doi:10.1038/433197a.
• Thomson, Thomas (1830). The History of Chemistry, London: Henry Colburn and Richard Bentley.
• Ortus Medicinae (Origin of Medicine, 1648)