138 THE HISTORY OF BIOLOGY 



Jean Baptiste van Helmont was born at Brussels in the year 1577, of a 

 noble and wealthy family. Left fatherless at an early age, he became a pre- 

 cocious child, and by his seventeenth year he had already completed his 

 university studies in philosophy. This, however, failed to satisfy him; he 

 entered a Jesuit college and there studied theology, especially that of a 

 mystical character, and this puzzling over life's problems entirely obsessed 

 his mind. He eagerly studied the neo-Platonists and Paracelsus, for whom 

 throughout his life he expressed a keen, but by no means uncritical admira- 

 tion. At the age of twenty-two he took the degree of doctor of medicine, 

 spent the next few years in travelling through different countries, and then 

 contracted a wealthy marriage and settled down on an estate in his home 

 district, dividing his time between scientific research and splendid acts of 

 benevolence. He carried on his medical practice simply for charity and with- 

 out any fee; every offer of permanent employment, even the most brilliant, 

 he firmly declined. He died in 1644. 



As already mentioned, van Helmont regarded Paracelsus as his master 

 and undoubtedly had a certain afhnity with him. True, he possessed none of 

 his precursor's intrepid geniality, but he was far more cultured, both scientifi- 

 cally and socially. In his personal character he was mild and lovable, but he 

 seems to have been of a nervous disposition, which gave his mystical specu- 

 lations a peculiar quality of exaltation. He had spiritual visions, which he 

 produced by auto-suggestion through gazing at some strong source of light; 

 he employed in his researches for obtaining scientific results a direct intro- 

 spection which he achieved by exalted concentration of thought, both during 

 the day's work and in the night's rest, when in a state between sleeping and 

 waking he received inspiration, by which he set great store. This inspiration, 

 however, often led him widely astray, as when he believed that he had suc- 

 ceeded in producing rats in a vessel in which some rags and bran had been 

 kept, or when he imagined he had converted quicksilver into gold, a dis- 

 covery which so delighted him that he had his son, who was born just at 

 that time, christened Mercurius.^ But fortunately he had also better inspira- 

 tions. One of these was his determined opposition to the classical authorities 

 Aristotle and Galen. Their theories he believed it was his mission in life to 

 challenge, both because they led to practically worthless results and because 

 they were pagan. This latter reason is characteristic. While the man of the 

 Renaissance period, Paracelsus, scorned the classics because they were an- 

 tiquated authorities and stood in the way of his personal ideas, the emotional 

 disciple of the Jesuits, van Helmont, felt himself moved first of all to substi- 

 tute a Christian for the heathen science. This induced him, however, to make 



^ This Franz Mercurius van Helmont devoted himself even more exclusively than his 

 father to purely mystical speculations. The fact of his having published the latter's complete 

 works constituted his greatest service to science. 



