Abstract
In a manuscript entitled Analogia inter operationes Chemicas & naturalles, dated 1 May 1657, Henry Power wrote:
Whosoever hath seene the admirable and almost incredible effects of chimistry, wrought by their severall progressive operations of Maceration, fermentation . . . circulation, Rectification, cohobation, and the like will easily conclude that all the operations of Nature within us, are most emphatically expressed, and indeed are . . . practiced by the chymists . . ., & therefore the great and mysterious works of Concoction, chylification, Sanguification, assimilation, & cet. are most powerfully demonstrated by chymicall Analogy. For Nature the Protochymist acts in this Internall Laboratory of Man (the Body) as the Hermeticall Practitioners doe externally in their Furnaces ...‘2
Paper read at the Colloquium on Alchemy and Chemistry in the XVI and XVII Centuries, The Warburg Institute, London, 26-27 July 1989.I am grateful to P. Weiler and Professor P.M. Rattansi for their comments on it.
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Notes
British Library, MS Sloane 1393, fol. 37. On Henry Power see C. Webster, “Henry Power’s experimental Philosophy”, Ambix, 14 (1967), pp. 150–78.
Harvey’s views of spirits are contained in W. Harvey, Exercitationes duae Anatomicae de Circulatione Sanguinis ad Joannem Riolanum filium... (Rotterdam, 1648), pp. 66-67. Harvey’s position is discussed in D.P. Walker, “The Astral Body in Renaissance Medicine”, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes, 21 (1958), pp. 130–33, by W. Pagel, William Harvey’s Biological Ideas. Selected aspects and Historical Background (Basle and New York, 1966), pp. 252-53; by J.J. Bono, “The Language of Life: Jean Fernel (1497-1558) and Spiritus in Pre-Harveyan Bio-Medical Thought”, Ph.D. diss, Harvard University, 1981, pp. 267-81 and id. “Reform and the Languages of Renaissance Theoretical Medicine: Harvey versus Fernel”, Journal of the History of Medicine, 23 (1990), pp. 341-87.
The threefold division of medical spirits into natural (governed by the liver), vital (by the earth) and animal (by the brain) is not in Galen. It was introduced by the Isagoge of Johannitius (Hunayn ibn Ishaq). On Galen’s notion of pneuma, see O. Temkin, “On Galen’s pneumatology”, Gesnerus, 8 (1951), pp. 180–88. On the Isagoge see
D. Jacquart, “A l’aube de la renaissance médicale des XIe-XIIe siècles: I’ Isagoge Johannitii et son traducteur”, Bibliothè;que de l’Ecole des Chartres, 144 (1986), pp. 209–40.
J. Fernel, De Abditis Rerum Causis (Paris, 1548), pp. 75-79; 175-77. Cf. D. P. Walker, “The Astral Body”, pp. 121-26. Illuminating insights in Fernel’s pneumatology are in M. L. Bianchi, “Occulto e manifesto nella Medicina del Rinascimento: Jean Fernel e Pietro Severino”, Atti e Memorie dell’Accademia Toscana di Scienze e Lettere, La Colombaria, vol. 48 Nuova serie: 33 (1982), pp. 183–248, J.J. Bono, “The Languages of Life (n. 4), pp. 217-32; L. A. Deer,” Academic Theories of Generation: The contemporaries and successors of Jean Fernel (1497-1558)”, Ph.D. thesis, University of London, The Warburg Institute, 1980, pp. 387-404. Jean Riolan the Elder, a prominent member of the Paris Faculty of Medicine, strenuously defended Galenic medicine against the iatrochemists. Although Argenterio rejected the current tripartition of spirits and aimed at reforming Galenic medicine, he did not accept Fernel’s doctrine of Spiritus insitus as celestial substance. On Argenterio see
Nancy G. Siraisi, “Giovanni Argenterio and the Sixteenth-Century Medical Innovation. Between Princely Patronage and Academic Controversy”, Osiris, 2nd series 6 (1990), pp. 161–80.
For Aristotle’s notion of pneuma, see A. L. Peck, “The Connate Pneuma: an essential factor in Aristotle’s solutions to the problems of reproduction and sensation”, in Science, Medicine and History, ed. E. A. Underwood, 2 vols. (London, 1953), 1, pp. 111-21. For medieval discussions on spirits, see J. J. Bono, “Medical Spirits and the Medieval Language of Life”, Traditio, 40 (1984), pp. 91–130.
Iacopo Zabarella, in “De Calore Coelesti” (De Rebus Naturalibus Libri XXX (Tarvisio, 1604) (first edition: 1590), pp. 285–87) claimed that all kinds of heat were generated by the heavens. Daniel Sennert’s views are in Institutionum Medicinae Libri V (Wittebergae, 1628), liber I, caput V, pp. 32-44. For the opposite position, see Sebastiano Paparella, De Calido libri III (Perusiae, 1573), ff. 62-64 and Cesare Cremonini, Apologia Dictorum Aristotelis de Calido Innato (Venetiis, 1626). A survey of Renaissance interpretations of Aristotle’s text is in L. A. Deer, “Academic Theories”, (n. 7), pp. 127-265, 413-19. It is to be noted that, though very few identified spiritus insitus with calidum innatum, the general view was that spirit was the principal part of it.
J. Duchesne, Ad Veritatem Hermeticae Medicinae (Paris, 1604), p. 82; O. Croll, Basilica Chymica (Frankfurt, 1609), pp. 31-34, 2, 55, 100. For Duchesne see A. G. Debus, The Chemical Philosophy (New York, 1977), 2 vols, 1, pp. 149–53, 159-67. On Croll see O. Hannaway. The Chemist and the Word (Baltimore, 1975).
University of Sheffield, Hartlib Papers 26/33/9-10. For a survey of the literature on distillation see R.P. Multhauf, “The Significance of Distillation in Renaissance Medical Chemistry” Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 30 (1956), pp. 329–46, R. J. Forbes, A Short History of the Art of Distillation (Leiden, 1948) and S. Colnort-Bodet, Le Code Alchimique Dévoilé. Distillateurs, Alchimistes et Symbolistes (Paris, 1989). See also
F. Sherwood-Taylor, “The idea of Quintessence”, in Science, Medicine and History, 2 vols (Oxford, 1953), 1, pp. 247–65. One of the most influential books on distillation was Johannes de Rupescissa’s Liber de Consideratione Quintae essentiae. In Gratarolus’s edition of 1561 we read that the preservation of the human body from corruption cannot be achieved by something which is itself corruptible, as the four elements are, but only by something incorruptible, the quinta essentia rerum, radix vitae, or spiritus, which, although being non-elemental, can nevertheless be found in sublunary bodies. This view was adopted by numerous authors in the sixteen the century, like Gesner, Ulstadt and Conrad Khunrath. On Rupescissa see
L. Thorndike, History of Magic and Experimental Science, vol. 3 (New York, 1934), pp. 347–69 and 725-34, where the manuscript tradition of Rupescissa’s work is discussed. See also
R.P. Multhauf, “John of Rupescissa and the Origin of Medical Chemistry”. Isis, 45 (1954), pp. 359–67 and S. Colnort-Bodet, Le Code Alchimique (as above) passim.
On Nicaise Lefebvre see H. Metzger, Les Théories Chimiques en France du début du XVIIe à la fin du XVIIIe siècle (Paris, 1923), pp. 62-82; J.R. Partington, A History of Chemistry, 4 vols (London, 1961–72), vol. 3, pp. 17–24 and Dictionary of Scientific Biography (hereafter as DSB) ed. C. C. Gillispie (New York, 1970-) s.v.
De Rachitide, sive morbo puerili (London 1650), Engl. tr. by N. Culpeper: A Treatise of the Rickets (London, 1651), p. 43. The work was the outcome of Glisson’s collaboration with G. Bate and A. Regemorter. Cf. E. Clarke, “Whistler and Glisson on Rickets”, Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 36 (1962), pp. 48–49.
J. Betts, De Ortu et Natura Sanguinis (London, 1669), sig. A2r. For biographical accounts of Betts see DNB and J. Gillow, A Literary and Biographical Dictionary of the English Catholics from the break with Rome in 1534 to the present time (London, 1885), vol. 1, pp. 205–206.
G. Thomson, Aimatiasis, or the true way of Preserving the Bloud in its Integrity, and Rectifying it, if at any time polluted and degenerated (London, 1670), pp. 30-31. For Thomson see C. Webster, “The Helmontian George Thomson and William Harvey: the revival of Splenectomy in Physiological Research”, Medical History, 15 (1971), pp. 154–57. A compromise between Galenic and chemical medicine was also suggested by George Castle in The Chymical Galenist (London, 1667).
M. Nedham, Medela Medicinae (London, 1665); G. Acton, Physical Reflexions (n. 80). On the English Helmontians, see A. Clericuzio, “From van Helmont to Robert Boyle. A Study of the transmission of Helmontian Chemical and Medical Ideas in Seventeenth Century England”, The British Journal for the History of Science, 26 (1993), pp 303–34.
Ibid., p. 125. Similar to Charleton’s were Glisson’s ideas about the activity of matter in Tractatus de Natura Substantiae Energetica (n. 62), where he maintained that matter was imbued with three faculties: Perceptiva, appetitiva, motiva. Glisson’s Tractatus and More’s objections have been discussed by John Henry in “Medicine and Pneumatology: Henry More, Richard Baxter, and Francis Glisson’s Treatise on the Energetic Nature of Substance”, Medical History, 31 (1987), 15–40. For the Cambridge Platonists’ attacks on the medical theories of sense perception see J. Henry, “The Matter of souls: medical theories and theology”, in R. French and A. Wear (eds), The medical revolution of the seventeenth century (Cambridge, 1989), pp. 87-113.
Willis, Cerebri Anatome, Practice, pp. 72-73. Willis’s physiology of the brain is discussed in A. Meyer and R. Hyerons, “On Thomas Willis’s Concepts of Neurophysiology” Medical History, 9 (1965) pp. 1–15, 142-55.
Keynes MS. 12A, fol. 1v quoted in B. J. T. Dobbs, “Newton’s Alchemy and His Theory of Matter”, Isis, 73 (1982), p. 515. Dobbs suggests Stoic pneuma as Newton’s source. I am rather inclined to think that sources closer to him, namely the works of Paracelsus and his followers formed the background of Newton’s notion of spirit as expressed in the Keynes MS. 12A. Cf. O. Croll, Basilica Chymica (n. 13), pp. 42, 54.
Newton sent “An Hypothesis explaining the Properties of Light” to Oldenburg on 7 December 1675. The paper was read at a meeting of the Society on 9 December 1675. The text was published by T. Birch in the History of the Royal Society of London, 4 vols (London, 1756–57), III, pp. 247–60. Turnbull has published a version based on both the copy in the Register Book of the Royal Society and on the original in Cambridge University Library, MS. Add. 3970, fols 538-47. See The Correspondence of Isaac Newton edited by H. W. Turnbull, J. F. Scott, and L. Tilling, 7 vols (Cambridge 1959–77), 1, pp. 362-86 [hereafter Correspondence of Isaac Newton]. As B. J. T. Dobbs has suggested, before the Hypothesis Newton may have written the paper “Of Natures obvious laws & processes in vegetation”, published in B. J. T. Dobbs, The Janus Faces of Genius (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 256-70, in which spirit is conceived as the main agent of all natural processes (see
P.M. Rattansi, “Newton’s Alchemical Studies”, in Science, Medicine and Society in the Renaissance. Eassays to honor Walter Pagel, 2 vols (New York, 1982), II, pp. 175–80 and B. J. T. Dobbs, “Newton’s Alchemy and His Theory of Matter”, (n. 123), pp. 517-21.) Both Rattansi and Dobbs have convincingly stressed the importance of alchemical and chemical theories in Newton’s investigation of non-mechanical causes of some natural phenomena.
Correspondence of Isaac Newton, 1, p. 365. It is significant that in this paper Newton unambiguously rejected the identification of animal spirits with spirit of nitre, which was advocated in Mayow’s Tractatus Quinque published in 1674. Newton went on to suppose that the “aethereall Spirit may be condensed in fermenting or burning bodies, or otherwise inspissated in ye pores of ye earth to a tender matter wch may be as it were ye succus nutritius of ye earth or primary substance out of wch things generable grow or otherwise coagulate, in the pores of the earth and water, into some kind of of humid active matter for the continuall uses of nature...” (ibid). For Newton’s theories of aether see D. Kubrin, “Newton and the Cyclical Cosmos: Providence and the Mechanical Philosophy”, Journal of the History of Ideas, 27 (1967), pp. 325–46, especially pp. 334-36. The alchemical and chemical sources of Newton’s speculation on aether contained in this letter have been pointed out by P. M. Rattansi, “Newton’s Alchemical Studies”; by
J. E. McGuire, “Transmutation and Immutability: Newton’s Doctrine of Physical Qualities”, Ambix, 14 (1967), pp. 84–86 and by J. J. T. Dobbs, The Foundations of Newton’s Alchemy (n. 49), pp. 204-207.
Correspondence of Isaac Newton, 1, p. 369 (my italics). As betty Dobbs as pointed out, one of the sources of Newton’s notion of mediation was the “Clavis”, which now we know was written in 1651 by Starkey. See B. J. T. Dobbs, The Foundations (n. 49), pp. 207-208; W. Newman, “Newton’s Clavis as Starkey’s Key”, Isis, 78 (1987), pp. 564–74.
See J. E. McGuire, “Forces, Active Principles and Newton’s invisible Realm”, Ambix, 15 (1968), pp. 154–308, and
P. M. Heimann, “Nature is a perpetual worker: Newton’s Aether and Eighteenth-Century Natural Philosophy”, Ambix, 20 (1973), p. 7.
The best study of Stahl’s chemistry is still H. Metzger, Newton, Stahl, Boerhaave et la doctrine chimique (Paris, 1930). On Stahl’s physiology, see L. King, “Stahl and Hoffmann: A Study of Eighteenth Century Animism”, Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences, 19 (1964), pp. 118–30.
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Clericuzio, A. (1994). The Internal Laboratory. The Chemical Reinterpretation of Medical Spirits in England (1650–1680). In: Rattansi, P., Clericuzio, A. (eds) Alchemy and Chemistry in the 16th and 17th Centuries. International Archives of the History of Ideas / Archives Internationales D’Histoire des Idées, vol 140. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-011-0778-5_3
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