- ments made by both Hirsch and Dezeimeris to the effect
that Van Helmont, in matters relating to physiology and pathology, was unquestionably a precise and critical observer, a sound thinker, and a correct interpreter; but the plan of the present work will not permit me to enter into all these details. I can only quote a few of the teachings or sayings to which Hirsch refers:—
Digestion does not, as Galen maintains, depend upon heat, but
upon a certain ferment existing in the gastric juice.
Heat is not, as has hitherto been taught, the cause of life, but rather one of its products.
The final cause of the sensory phenomena of life is the archaeus influus, which, while it is inseparably united with matter, nevertheless does not represent the soul itself, but rather the organ of the soul, and is seated in the "duumvirate" of the spleen and the stomach.
Disease, in order to acquire sufficient power to antagonize life effectively, must unite its forces with the archaeus influus.
It is claimed that Van Helmont, more than any other
teacher of medicine, was instrumental in giving the death-*blow
to the practice—which prevailed in all the medical
schools of that day—of teaching the obsolescent Galenic
doctrines, and that for this valuable service alone he
deserves full recognition at the hands of the medical
profession of to-day. But, as we learn from Ernest von
Meyer's history of chemistry, Van Helmont has a much
stronger claim for recognition in the fact that he made
many important contributions to iatrochemistry and also
to fundamental or pure chemistry. Taking one thing with
another, says von Meyer, we may safely assert that Van
Helmont's useful contributions to the medical and chemical
sciences by far outweigh those which are of a fantastic or
useless nature. It was he, for example, who materially
increased our knowledge of the nature of carbonic acid.
He demonstrated how it may be extracted from limestone
or from potash by the aid of acids, from burning coal, and
from wine and beer while they are undergoing fermentation.
He also showed that it is present in the stomach, in various
