136 Van Helmont and the Rise [lect. 



ations. The ordinary vinous fermentation gives him his initial 

 idea ; following this up, he regards all the changes in the body 

 (not digestion only but also all others including nutrition, im- 

 pregnation and even movement) as due to the action of ferments. 

 And he reconciles this view with his view of the influence of the 

 Bias or Archceus, by the hypothesis that these spiritual agents 

 work not by acting directly on matter, but by making use of 

 the ferments, which are thus their servants or instruments. The 

 following is a brief sketch of his exposition of physiological events: 



He assumes the current teaching of the day to be (1) that 

 the food absorbed from the stomach and intestine is in the liver 

 endued with natural spirits, (2) that in the heart the natural 

 spirits are converted into vital spirits, and (3) that in the brain 

 the vital spirits are converted into animal spirits. And indeed 

 this was still to a large extent the teaching of the day. It was 

 as we have seen the exposition given by Descartes even after 

 van Helmont's death ; the influence of the Harveian doctrines 

 had not as yet made themselves fully felt. 



All this current teaching, says van Helmont, is wrong. 

 There are not three conversions, three upward developments 

 only, but in reality six. And each of these upward steps is of 

 the nature of a fermentation ; he speaks of them as six digestions 

 or concoctions, by which the dead food becomes the living, 

 active flesh. 



The first stage is the digestion in the stomach. It may be 

 noted that he wholly ignores saliva and the changes in the 

 mouth ; Steno and Wharton had not yet written. It is obvious 

 he says that in the stomach food and drink are converted into 

 chyle ; and this conversion takes place by means of a ferment. 

 But this ferment does not reside permanently in the stomach, is 

 not always there, for digestion is not continually going on in 

 the stomach ; the process is an intermittent one. The ferment 

 really comes from the spleen ; it is from the spleen that the 

 stomach draws all its energy!) And in another part of his book 

 he dwells on what he calls the duumvirate, the dual reign of 

 the stomach and the spleen. He was still under the dominion 

 of the old traditions of the spleen ; he had not got so far even 

 as the clear-sighted Vesalius ; and Malpighi had not yet written. 



