v] of Chemical Physiology. 129 



eminent though they were, failed to satisfy the intellectual 

 longings and the acute mind of the young van Helmont. To him 

 their sayings seemed empty words ; they made a great pretence to 

 learning, but in what they taught he could see no real truth, 

 could find no satisfaction for his mind. He refused to take the 

 degree of Master of Arts, as being a sign of scholastic frippery, 

 not of real knowledge. Anxious to satisfy his thirst for truth, 

 he turned to systematic botany, beginning, at that period, to be 

 seriously studied ; but this in turn he found to be as dry and 

 as unsatisfying as the herbaria which supplied its means of 

 study. He then tried law, but this he soon found worse than 

 even the others. He had almost reached the stage of Faust, 



Habe nun, ach ! Philosophie 



Juristerei und — 



But he had not yet tried medicine. This he was led to do, 

 and in this he, for the first time, found what his soul desired. 

 I mention these earlier ventures of his because they are 

 indications of an acute active mind earnestly seeking after real 

 truth ; and love of truth in spite of the somewhat fantastic 

 form which his ideas, after the fashion of Paracelsus, took in 

 his later writings was after all the key-note of his character. 



He threw himself so heartily into his medical studies that 

 in 1599, at the early age of twenty-two, he took his Doctorship 

 of Medicine, and is said to have been appointed immediately 

 afterwards to deliver a course of lectures on surgery. 



Wisely however he decided to travel, and the next four or 

 five years he spent in visiting different countries, Switzerland, 

 Italy, where he is said to have met Fabricius, France, and 

 England. 



Returning home in 1605, he arrived in time to study the 

 great epidemic of plague then raging in Antwerp, and afterwards 

 settled for a while at Brussels ; later in 1609, having married 

 a rich heiress, he took up his abode in the neighbouring town 

 of Vilvorde. Here he remained for the remainder of his life, 

 practising to a certain extent as a physician, chiefly however it 

 would appear as a work of charity, for his means were ample, 

 but mainly occupied with carrying out chemical observations 

 and experiments. And here in 1644 he died. 



f. l. 9 



