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STURM-LIOUVILLE
OPERATORS AND
APPLICATIONS
REVISED EDITION

VLADIMIR A. MARCHENKO

AMS CHELSEA PUBLISHING

American Mathematical Society • Providence, Rhode Island
Sturm-LiouviLLe
operatorS and
appLicationS
reviSed edition
Sturm-LiouviLLe
operatorS and
appLicationS
reviSed edition

vLadimir a. marchenko

AMS CHELSEA PUBLISHING

American Mathematical Society • Providence, Rhode Island
HEMATIC
AT A
M
L

ΤΡΗΤΟΣ ΜΗ
AME ICAN

ΕΙΣΙΤΩ

SOCIETY
Α Γ ΕΩ ΜΕ
R

FO
UN 8 88
DED 1
2000 Mathematics Subject Classification. Primary 34A55, 34B24, 35Q51, 47E05, 47J35.

For additional information and updates on this book, visit

[Link]/bookpages/chel-373

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Marchenko, V. A. (Vladimir Aleksandrovich), 1922–
Sturm-Liouville operators and applications / Vladimir A. Marchenko. — Rev. ed.
p. cm.
Rev. ed. of: Sturm-Liouville operators and applications. 1986.
Includes bibliographical references.
ISBN 978-0-8218-5316-0 (alk. paper)
1. Spectral theory (Mathematics) 2. Transformations (Mathematics) 3. Operator theory.
I. Title.

QA320.M286 2011
515.7222—dc22
2010051019

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permission should be addressed to the Acquisitions Department, American Mathematical Society,
201 Charles Street, Providence, Rhode Island 02904-2294 USA. Requests can also be made by
e-mail to reprint-permission@[Link].


c 1986 held by the American Mathematical Society. All rights reserved.
Revised Edition c 2011 by the American Mathematical Society.
Printed in the United States of America.

∞ The paper used in this book is acid-free and falls within the guidelines
established to ensure permanence and durability.
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10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 16 15 14 13 12 11
 CONTENTS

PREFACE TO THE REVISED EDITION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . vii

PREFACE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ix

Chapter 1 THE STURM-LIOUVILLE EQUATION AND

TRANSFORMATION OPERATORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1. Riemann’s Formula . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
2. Transformation Operators . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
3. The Sturm-Liouville Boundary Value Problem on a Bounded
Interval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 26
4. Asymptotic Formulas for Solutions of the Sturm-Liouville
Equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50
5. Asymptotic Formulas for Eigenvalues and Trace Formulas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 67

Chapter 2 THE STURM-LIOUVILLE BOUNDARY VALUE PROBLEM ON

THE HALF LINE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
1. Some Information on Distributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 101
2. Distribution-Valued Spectral Functions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117
3. The Inverse Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 134
4. The Asymptotic Formula for the Spectral Functions of Symmetric
Boundary Value Problems and the Equiconvergence Theorem . . . . . . . . . 153

Chapter 3 THE BOUNDARY VALUE PROBLEM OF SCATTERING THEORY . . 173

1. Auxiliary Propositions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 173
2. The Parseval Equality and the Fundamental Equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 200
3. The Inverse Problem of Quantum Scattering Theory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 216
4. Inverse Sturm-Liouville Problems on a Bounded Interval . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 240
5. The Inverse Problem of Scattering Theory on the Full Line . . . . . . . . . . . 284

Chapter 4 NONLINEAR EQUATIONS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307

1. Transformation Operators of a Special Form . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 307
2. Rapidly Decreasing Solutions of the Korteweg-de Vries Equation . . . . . . 322
3. Periodic Solutions of the Korteweg-de Vries Equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 332
4. Explicit Formulas for Periodic Solutions of the Korteweg-de Vries
Equation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 356

Chapter 5 STABILITY OF INVERSE PROBLEMS. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .363

1. Problem Formulation and Derivation of Main Formulas . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 363
2. Stability of the Inverse Scattering Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 370
v
vi CONTENTS

3. Error Estimate for the Reconstruction of a Boundary Value Problem

from its Spectral Function Given on the Set (−∞, N 2 ) Only. . . . . . . . . . 380

References . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 389
 Preface to the revised edition

In the first edition of this book the main attention was focused on the methods
of solving the inverse problem of spectral analysis and on the conditions (necessary
and sufficient) which the spectral data must satisfy in order to make it possible
to reconstruct the potential of the corresponding Sturm-Liouville operator. These
conditions imply that the spectral data (e.g. spectral function or scattering data)
must be known for all values of spectral parameter which belong to the spectrum
of the operator.
But from the physical meaning of the inverse problem it is obvious that the
values of spectral data on the whole spectrum are impossible to obtain from any
observations. For example, in the inverse problem of quantum scattering theory
the energy of the particles acts as the spectral parameter, and in order to find the
values of scattering data on the whole spectrum one has to conduct an experiment
with the particles of infinitely large energy. But for big enough values of energy the
scattering process is not any more described by Schrödinger equation with potential
q(x). Therefore, even allowing, ideally, the possibility to experiment with particles
of arbitrarily large energies, we would obtain, starting from a certain energy, data
relevant to process, which has certainly nothing to do with the equation that we
want to reconstruct. Hence, a principal question is as follows: what information
about the potential q(x) can be obtained, if the spectral function or scattering data
are known (generally speaking, approximately) only on a finite interval of values of
the spectral parameter?
The new Chapter 5, devoted to solving this problem, was added to this edition.
The convenient formulae are obtained, which allow to estimate the precision with
which the eigenfunctions and potentials of Schrödinger operator can be restored
when the scattering data or spectral function are known only on a finite interval of
values of spectral parameter.

V. Marchenko

vii
x
xi
xii
xiii
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waters are also called undinæ, and those of the fire vulcani. The
sylphs approach nearest to our nature, as they live in the air like us.
The sylphs, nymphs, and pigmies, sometimes obtain permission from
God to make themselves visible, to converse with men, to indulge in
carnal pleasures, and to produce children. But the salamanders have
no relation to man. These spiritual beings are acquainted with the
future, and capable of revealing it to man. They appear under the
form of ignes fatui. We have also the history of the fairies and the
giants; and are told how these spiritual beings are the guardians of
concealed treasures; and how these sylphs, nymphs, pigmies, and
salamanders, may be charmed, and their treasures taken from them.

This division of man into body and spirit, and of the things of
nature into visible and invisible, has in all ages of the world, been
adopted by fanatics, because it enabled them to explain the history
of ghosts, and a thousand similar prejudices. Hence the distinction
between soul and spirit, which is so very ancient; and hence the
three following harmonies to which the successors of Paracelsus paid
a particular attention:

Soul, Spirit, Body,

Mercury,Sulphur,Salt,
Water, Air, Earth.

The will and the imagination of man acts principally by means of the
spirit. Hence the reason of the efficacy of sorcery and magic. The
nævi materni are the impressions of these vice-men, and Paracelsus
calls them cocomica signa. The sideric body of man draws to him, by
imagination, all that surrounds him, and particularly the stars, on
which it acts like a magnet. In this manner, women with child, and
during the regular period of monthly evacuation, having a diseased
imagination, are not only capable of poisoning a mirror by their
breath, but of injuring the infants in their wombs, and even also of
poisoning the moon. But it seems needless to continue this
disagreeable detail of the absurd and ridiculous opinions which
Paracelsus has consigned to us in his different tracts.
 The Physiology of Paracelsus (if such a name can be applied to
his reveries) is nothing else than an application of the laws of the
Cabala to the explanation of the functions of the body. There exists,
he assures us, an intimate connexion between the sun and the
heart, the moon and the brain, Jupiter and the liver, Saturn and the
spleen, Mercury and the lungs, Mars and the bile, Venus and the
kidneys. In another part of his works, he informs us that the sun
acts on the umbilicus and the middle parts of the abdomen, the
moon on the spine, Mercury on the bowels, Venus on the organs of
generation, Mars on the face, Jupiter on the head, and Saturn on the
extremities. The pulse is nothing else than the measure of the
temperature of the body, according to the space of the six places
which are in relation to the planets. Two pulses under the sole of the
feet belong to Saturn and Jupiter, two at the elbow to Mars and
Venus, two in the temples to the moon and mercury. The pulse of
the sun is found under the heart. The macrocosm has also seven
pulses, which are the revolutions of the seven planets, and the
irregularity or intermittence of these pulses, is represented by the
eclipses. The moon and Saturn are charged in the macrocosm with
thickening the water, which causes it to congeal. In like manner the
moon of the microcosm, that is to say the brain, coagulates the
blood. Hence melancholy persons, whom Paracelsus calls lunatics,
have a thick blood. We ought not to say of a man that he has such
and such a complexion; but that it is Mars, Venus, &c., so that a
physician ought to know the planets of the microcosm, the arctic
and antarctic pole, the meridian, the zodiac, the east and the west,
before trying to explain the functions or cure the diseases.158 This
knowledge is acquired by a continual comparison of the macrocosm
with the microcosm. What must have been the state of medicine at
the time when Paracelsus wrote, when the propagator of such
opinions could be reckoned one of the greatest of its reformers?

The system of Galen had for its principal basis the doctrine of
the four elements, fire, air, water, and earth. Paracelsus neglected
these elements, and multiplied the substances of the disease itself.
He admits, strictly speaking, three or four elements; namely, the
star, the root, the element, the sperm, which he distinguishes by the
name of the true seed. All these elements were originally
confounded together in the chaos or yliados. The star is the active
force which gives form to matter. The stars are reasonable beings
addicted to sodomy and adultery, like other creatures. Each of them
draws at pleasure out of the chaos, the plant and the metal to which
it has an affinity, and gives a sideric form to their root. There are
two kinds of seed; the sperm is the vehicle of the true seed. It is
engendered by speculation, by imagination, by the power of the
star. The occult, invisible, sideric body produces the true seed, and
the Adamic man secretes only the visible envelope of it. Putrefaction
cannot give birth to a new body: the seed must pre-exist, and it is
developed during putrefaction by the power of the stars. The
generation of animals is produced by the concourse of the infinite
number of seeds which detach themselves from all parts of the body.
Thus the seed of the nose reproduces a nose, that of the eye the
eye, and so on.

With respect to the elements themselves, Paracelsus admits

occasionally their influence on the functions of the body, and the
theory of diseases; but he deduces the faculties which they possess
from the stars. It was he that first shook the doctrine of the four
elements, originally contrived by Empedocles. Alchymy had
introduced another set of elements, and the alchymists maintained
that salt, sulphur, and mercury, were the true elements of things.
Paracelsus endeavoured to reconcile these chemical elements with
his cabalistic ideas, and to show more clearly their utility in the
theory of medicine. He invented a sideric salt, which can only be
perceived by the exquisite senses of a theosophist, elevated by the
abnegation of all gross sensuality to a level with pure and spiritual
demons. This salt is the cause of the consistence of bodies, and it is
it which gives them the faculty of being reproduced from their ashes.

Paracelsus imagined also a sideric sulphur, which being vivified

by the influence of the stars, gives bodies the property of growing,
and of being combustible. He admits also a sideric mercury, the
foundation of fluidity and volatilization. The concourse of these three
substances forms the body. In different parts of his works,
Paracelsus says, that the elements are composed of these three
principles. In plants he calls the salt balsam, the sulphur resin and
the mercury gotaronium. In other passages he opposes the assertion
of the Galenists, that fire is dry and hot, air cold and moist, earth dry
and cold, water moist and cold. Each of these elements, he says, is
capable of admitting all qualities, so that in reality there exists a dry
water, a cold fire, &c.

I must not omit another remarkable physiological doctrine of

Paracelsus, namely, that there exists in the stomach a demon called
Archæus, who presides over the chemical operations which take
place in it, separating the poisonous from the nutritive part of food,
and furnishing the alimentary substances with the tincture, in
consequence of which they become capable of being assimilated.
This ruler of the stomach, who changes bread into blood, is the type
of the physician, who ought to keep up a good understanding with
him, and lend him his assistance. To produce a change in the
humours ought never to be the object of the true physician, he
should endeavour to concentrate all his operations on the stomach
and the ruler who reigns in it. This Archæus to whom the name of
Nature may also be given, produces all the changes by his own
power. It is he alone who cures diseases. He has a head and hands,
and is nothing else than the spirit of life, the sideric body of man,
and no other spirit besides exists in the body. Each part of the body
has also a peculiar stomach in which the secretions are elaborated.

There are, he informs us, five different causes of diseases. The

first is the ens astrorum. The constellations do not immediately
induce diseases, but they alter and infect the air. This is what,
properly speaking constitutes the entity of the stars. Some
constellations sulphurize the atmosphere, others communicate to it
arsenical, saline, or mercurial qualities. The arsenical astral entities
injure the blood, the mercurial the head, the saline the bones and
the vessels. Orpiment occasions tumours and dropsies, and the
bitter stars induce fever.

The second morbific cause is the ens veneni, which proceeds

from alimentary substances: when the archeus is languid
putrefaction ensues, either localiter or emuncturaliter. This last takes
place when those evacuations, which ought to be expelled by the
nose, the intestines, or the bladder, are retained in the body.
Dissolved mercury escapes through the pores of the skin, white
sulphur by the nose, arsenic by the ears, sulphur diluted with water
by the eyes, salt in solution by the urine, and sulphur deliquesced by
the intestines.

The third morbific cause of disease is the ens naturale; but

Paracelsus subjects to the ens astrorum the principles which the
schools are in the habit of arranging among the number of natural
causes. The ens spirituale forms the fourth species and the ens
deale or Christian entity the fifth. This last class comprehends all the
immediate effects of divine predestination.

It would lead us too far if I were to point out the strange

methods which he takes to discover the cause of diseases. But his
doctrine concerning tartar is too important, and does our fanatic too
much credit to be omitted. It is without doubt the most useful of all
the innovations which he introduced. Tartar according to him, is the
principle of all the maladies proceeding from the thickening of the
humours, the rigidity of the solids, or the accumulation of earthy
matter. Paracelsus thought the term stone not suitable to indicate
that matter, because it applies only to one species of it. Frequently
the principle proceeds from mucilage, and mucilage is tartar. He calls
this principle tartar (tartarus) because it burns like hellfire, and
occasions the most dreadful diseases. As tartar (bitartrate of potash)
is deposited at the bottom of the wine-cask, in the same way tartar
in the living body is deposited on the surface of the teeth. It is
deposited on the internal parts of the body when the archæus acts
with too great impetuosity and in an irregular manner, and when it
separates the nutritive principle with too much impetuosity. Then the
saline spirit unites itself to it and coagulates the earthy principle,
which is always present, but often in the state of materia prima
without being coagulated.

In this manner tartar, in the state of materia prima, may be

transmitted from father to son. But it is not hereditary and
transmittable when it has already assumed the form of gout, of renal
calculus, or of obstruction. The saline spirit which gives it its form,
and causes its coagulation, is seldom pure and free from mixture;
usually it contains alum, vitriol, or common salt; and this mixture
contributes also to modify the tartarous diseases. The tartar may be
likewise distinguished according as it comes from the blood itself, or
from foreign matters accumulated in the humours. The great
number of calculi which have been found in every part of the body,
and the obstructions, confirm the generality of this morbific cause,
to which are due most of the diseases of the liver. When the
tartarous matter is increased by certain articles of food, renal calculi
are engendered, a calculous paroxysm is induced, and violent pain is
occasioned. It acts as an emetic, and may even give occasion to
death, when the saline spirit becomes corrosive; and when the tartar
coagulated by it becomes too irritating.

Tartar, then, is always an excrementitious substance, which in

many cases results from the too great activity of the digestive
forces. It may make its appearance in all parts of the body, from the
irregularity and the activity, too energetic or too indolent, of the
archeus; and then it occasions particular accidents relative to each
of the functions. Paracelsus enumerates a great number of diseases
of the organs, which may be explained by that one cause; and
affirms, that the profession of medicine would be infinitely more
useful, if medical men would endeavour to discover the tartar before
they tried to explain the affections.

Paracelsus points out, also, the means by which we can

distinguish the presence of tartar in urine. For this it is necessary,
not merely to inspect the urine, but to subject it to a chemical
analysis. He declaims violently against the ordinary ouroscopy. He
divides urine into internal and external; the internal comes from the
blood, and the external announces the nature of the food and drink
which has been employed. To the sediment of urine he gives the
new name of alcola, and admits three species of it, namely,
hypostasis, divulsio, and sedimen. The first is connected with the
stomach, the second with the liver, and the third with the kidneys;
and tartar predominates in all the three.

The Cabala constantly directs Paracelsus in his therapeutics and

materia medica. As all terrestrial things have their image in the
region of the stars, and as diseases depend also on the influence of
the stars, we have nothing more to do, in order to obtain a certain
cure for these diseases, than to discover, by means of the Cabala,
the harmony of the constellations. Gold is a specific against all
diseases of the heart, because, in the mystic scale, it is in harmony
with that viscus. The liquor of the moon and crystal cure the
diseases of the brain. The liquor alkahest and cheiri are efficacious
against those of the liver. When we employ vegetable substances,
we must consider their harmony with the constellations, and their
magical harmony with the parts of the body and the diseases, each
star drawing, by a sort of magical virtue, the plant for which it has
an affinity, and imparting to it its activity. So that plants are a kind of
sublunary stars. To discover the virtues of plants, we must study
their anatomy and cheiromancy; for the leaves are their hands, and
the lines observable on them enable us to appreciate the virtues
which they possess. Thus the anatomy of the chelidonium shows us
that it is a remedy for jaundice. These are the celebrated signatures
by means of which we deduce the virtues of vegetables, and the
medicines of analogy which they present in relation to their form.
Medicines, like women, are known by the forms which they affect.
He who calls in question this principle, accuses the Divinity of
falsehood, the infinite wisdom of whom has contrived these external
characters to bring the study of them more upon a level with the
weakness of the human understanding. On the corolla of the
euphrasia there is a black dot; from this we may conclude that it
furnishes an excellent remedy against all diseases of the eye. The
lizard has the colour of malignant ulcers, and of the carbuncle; this
points out the efficacy which that animal possesses as a remedy.

These signatures were exceedingly convenient for the fanatics,

since they saved them the trouble of studying the medical virtues of
plants, but enabled them to decide the subject à priori. Paracelsus
acted very considerately, when he ascribed these virtues principally
to the stars, and affirmed that the observation of favourable
constellations is an indispensable condition in the employment of
these medicines. “The remedies are subjected to the will of the
stars, and directed by them; you ought therefore to wait till heaven
is favourable, before ordering a medicine.”

Paracelsus considered all the effects of plants as specifics, and

the use of them as secrets. The same notions explain the eulogy
which he bestowed on the elixir of long life, and upon all the means
which he employed to prolong the term of existence. He believed
that these methods, which contained the materia prima, served to
repair the constant waste of that matter in the human body. He was
acquainted, he says, with four of these arcana, to which he applied
the mystic terms, mercury of life, philosopher’s stone, &c. The
polygonum persicaria was an infallible specific against all the effects
of magic. The method of using it is, to apply it to the suffering part,
and then to bury it in the earth. It draws out the malignant spirits
like a magnet, and it is buried to prevent these malignant spirits
from making their escape.

The reformation of Paracelsus had the great advantage of

representing chemistry as an indispensable art in the preparation of
medicines. The disgusting decoctions and useless syrups gave place
to tinctures, essences, and extracts. Paracelsus says, expressly, that
the true use of chemistry is to prepare medicines, and not to make
gold. He takes that opportunity of declaiming against cooks and
innkeepers, who drown medicines in soup, and thus destroy all their
properties. He blames medical men for prescribing simples, or
mixtures of simples, and affirms that the object should always be to
extract the quintessence of each substance; and he describes at
length the method of extracting this quintessence. But he was very
little scrupulous about the substances from which this quintessence
was to be extracted. The heart of a hare, the bones of a hare, the
bone of the heart of a stag, mother-of-pearl, coral, and various other
bodies may, he says, be used indiscriminately to furnish a
quintessence capable of curing some of the most grievous diseases.

Paracelsus combats with peculiar energy the method of cure

employed by the disciples of Galen, directed solely against the
predominating humours, and the elementary qualities. He blames
them for attempting to correct the action of their medicines, by the
addition of useless ingredients. Fire and chemistry, he affirmed, are
the sole correctives. It was Paracelsus that first introduced tin as a
remedy for worms, though his mode of employing it was not good.

I have been thus particular in pointing out the philosophical and

medical opinions of Paracelsus, because they were productive of
such important consequences, by setting medical men free from the
slavish deference which they had been accustomed to pay to the
dogmas of Galen and Avicenna. But it was the high rank to which he
raised chemistry, by making a knowledge of it indispensable to all
medical men; and by insisting that the great importance of
chemistry did not consist in the formation of gold, but in the
preparation of medicines, that rendered the era of Paracelsus so
important in the history of chemistry; for after his time the art of
chemistry was cultivated by medical men in general—it became a
necessary part of their education, and began to be taught in colleges
and medical schools. The object of chemistry came to be, not to
discover the philosopher’s stone, but to prepare medicines; and a
great number of new medicines, both from the mineral and
vegetable kingdom—some of more, some of less, consequence, soon
issued from the laboratories of the chemical physicians.
 There can be little doubt that many chemical preparations were
either first introduced into medicine by Paracelsus, or at least were
first openly prescribed by him: though from the nature of his
writings, and the secrecy in which he endeavoured to keep his most
valuable remedies, it is not easy to point out what these remedies
were. Mercury is said to have been employed in medicine by Basil
Valentine; but it was Paracelsus who first used it openly as a cure for
the venereal disease, and who drew general attention to it by his
encomiums on its medical virtues, and by the eclat of the cures
which he performed by means of it, after all the Galenical
prescriptions of the schools had been tried in vain.

He ascertained that alum contains, united to an acid, not a

metallic oxide, but an earth. He mentions metallic arsenic; but there
is some reason for believing that this metal was known to Geber and
the Arabian physicians. Zinc is mentioned by him, and likewise
bismuth, as substances not truly metallic, but approaching to metals
in their properties: for malleability and ductility were considered by
him as essential to the metals.159 I cannot be sure of any other
chemical fact which appears in Paracelsus, and which was not known
before his time. The use of sal ammoniac in subliming several
metallic calces, was familiar to him, but it had long ago been
explained by Geber. It is clear also that Geber was acquainted with
aqua regia, and that he employed it to dissolve gold. Paracelsus’s
reputation as a chemist, therefore, depends not upon any
discoveries which he actually made, but upon the great importance
which he attached to the knowledge of it, and to his making an
acquaintance with chemistry an indispensable requisite of a medical
education.

Paracelsus, as the founder of a new system of medicine, the

object of which was to draw chemistry out of that state of obscurity
and degradation into which it had been plunged, and to give it the
charge of the preparation of medicine, and presiding over the whole
healing art, deserved a particular notice; and I have even
endeavoured, at some length, to lay his system of opinions, absurd
as it is, before the reader. But the same attention is not due to the
herd of followers who adopted his absurdities, and even carried
them, if possible, still further than their master: at the same time
there are one or two particulars connected with the Paracelsian sect
which it would be improper to omit.

The most celebrated of his followers was Leonhard Thurneysser-

zum-Thurn, who was born in 1530, at Basle, where his father was a
goldsmith. His life, like that of his master, was checkered with very
extraordinary vicissitudes. In 1560 he was sent to Scotland to
examine the lead-mines in that country. In 1558 he commenced
miner and sulphur extractor at Tarenz on the Inn, and was so
successful, that he acquired a great reputation. He had turned his
attention to medicine on the Paracelsian plan, and in 1568 made
himself distinguished by several important cures which he
performed. In 1570 he published his Quinta Essentia, with wooden
cuts, in Munster; from thence he went to Frankfort on the Oder, and
published his Piso, a work which treats of waters, rivers, and
springs. John George, Elector of Brandenburg, was at that time in
Frankfort, and was informed that the treatise of Thurneysser pointed
out the existence of a great deal of riches in the March of
Brandenburg, till that time unknown. His courtiers, who were
anxious to establish mines in their possessions, united in
recommending the author. He was consulted about a disease under
which the wife of the elector was labouring, and having performed a
cure, he was immediately named physician to this prince.

He turned this situation to the best account. He sold Spanish

white, and other cosmetics, to the ladies of the court; and instead of
the disgusting decoctions of the Galenists, he administered the
remedies of Paracelsus under the pompous titles of tincture of gold,
magistery of the sun, potable gold, &c. By these methods he
succeeded in amassing a prodigious fortune, but was not fortunate
enough to be able to keep it. Gaspard Hoffmann, professor at
Frankfort, a well-informed and enlightened man, published a
treatise, the object of which was to expose the extravagant
pretensions and ridiculous ignorance of Thurneysser. This book drew
the attention of the courtiers, and opened the eyes of the elector.
Thurneysser lost much of his reputation; and the methods by which
he attempted to bolster himself up, served only to sink him still
lower in the estimation of men of sense. Among other things, he
gave out that he was the possessor of a devil, which he carried
about with him in a bottle. This pretended devil was nothing else
than a scorpion, preserved in a phial of oil. The trick was discovered,
and the usual consequences followed. He lost a process with his
wife, from whom he was separated; this deprived him of the
greatest part of his fortune. In 1584 he fled to Italy, where he
occupied himself with the transmutation of metals, and he died at
Cologne in 1595.

Thurneysser extols Paracelsus as the only true physician that

ever existed. His Quintessence is written in verse. In the first book
The Secret is the speaker. He is represented with a padlock in his
mouth, a key in his hand, and seated on a coffer in a chamber, the
windows of which are shut. This personage teaches that all things
are composed of salt, sulphur, and mercury, or of earth, air, and
water; and consequently that fire is excluded from the number of
the elements. We must search for the secret in the Bible, and then in
the stars and the spirits. In the second book, Alchymy is the speaker.
She points out the mode of performing the processes; and says that
to endeavour to fix volatile substances, is the same thing as to
endeavour to trace white letters on a wall with a piece of charcoal.
She prohibits all long processes, because God created the world in
six days.

His method of judging of the diseases from the urine of the

patient deserves to be mentioned. He distilled the urine, and fixed to
the receiver a tube furnished with a scale, the degrees of which
consisted of all the parts of the body. The phenomena which he
observed during the distillation of the urine, enabled him to draw
inferences respecting the state of all these different organs.
 I pass over Bodenstein, Taxites, and Dorn, who distinguished
themselves as partisans of Paracelsus. Dorn derived the whole of
chemistry from the first chapter of Genesis, the words of which he
explained in an alchymistical sense. These words in particular, “And
God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under
the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament,”
appeared to him to be an account of the great work. Severinus,
physician to the King of Denmark, and canon of Roskild, was also a
celebrated partisan of Paracelsus; but his writings do not show either
that knowledge or stretch of thought which would enable us to
account for the reputation which he acquired and enjoyed.

There were very few partisans of Paracelsus out of Germany.

The most celebrated of his followers among the French, was Joseph
du Chesne, better known by the name of Quercitanus, who was
physician to Henry IV. He was a native of Gascony, and drew many
enemies upon himself by his arrogant and overbearing conduct. He
pretended to be acquainted with the method of making gold. He was
a thorough-going Paracelsian. He affirmed that diseases, like plants,
spring from seeds. The word alchymy, according to him, is composed
of the two Greek words ἁλς (salt) and χημεια, because the great
secret is concealed in salt. All bodies are composed of three
principles, as God is of three substances. These principles are
contained in saltpetre, the salts of sulphur solid and volatile, and the
volatile mercurial salt. He who possesses sal generalis may easily
produce philosophical gold, and draw potable gold from the three
kingdoms of nature. To prove the possibility of this transmutation, he
cites an experiment very often repeated after him, and which some
theologians have even employed as analogous to the resurrection of
the dead; namely, the faculty which plants have of being produced
from their ashes. His materia medica is founded on the signatures of
plants, which he carries so far as to assert that male plants are more
suitable to men, and female plants to women. Sulphuric acid, he
says, has a magnetic virtue, in consequence of which it is capable of
curing the epilepsy. He recommends the magisterium cranii humani
as an excellent medicine, and boasts much of the virtues of
antimony.

Du Chesne was opposed by Riolanus, who attacked chemical

remedies with much bitterness. The medical faculty of Paris took up
the cause of the Galenists with much zeal, and prohibited their
fellows and licentiates from using any chemical medicines whatever.
He had to sustain a dispute with Aubert relative to the origin and the
transmutation of metals. Fenot came to the assistance of Aubert,
and affirmed that gold possesses no medical properties whatever,
that crabs’ eyes are of no use when administered in intermittents,
and that the laudanum of Paracelsus (being an opiate) is in reality
hurtful instead of being beneficial.

The decree of the medical faculty of Paris which placed

antimony among the poisons, and which occasioned that of the
Parliament of Paris, was composed by Simon Pietre, the elder, a man
of great erudition and the most unimpeachable probity. Had it been
literally obeyed it would have occasioned very violent proceedings;
because chemical remedies, as they act more promptly and with
greater energy, were getting daily into more general use. In 1603
the celebrated Theodore Turquet de Mayenne was prosecuted,
because, in spite of the prohibition, he had sold antimonial
preparations. The decree of the faculty against him exhibits a
remarkable proof of the bigotry and intolerance of the times.160
However Turquet does not seem to have been molested
notwithstanding this decree. He ceased indeed to be professor of
chemistry, but continued to practise medicine as formerly; and two
members of the faculty, Seguin and Akakia, even wrote an apology
for him. At last he went to England, whither he had been invited, to
accept an honourable appointment.

The mystical doctrines of Paracelsus are supposed to have given

origin to the sect of Rosecrucians, concerning which so much has
been written and so little certain is known. It is not at all unlikely
that the greatest part, if not the whole that has been stated about
the antiquity, and extent, and importance of this sect, is mere
fiction, and that the origin of the whole was nothing else than a
ludicrous performance of Valentine Andreæ, an ecclesiastic of Calwe,
in the country of Wirtemburg, a man of much learning, genius, and
philanthropy. From his life, written by himself, and preserved in the
library of Wolfenbuttel, we learn that in the year 1603 he drew up
the celebrated Noce Chimique of Christian Rosenkreuz, in order to
counteract the alchymistical and the theosophistical dogmas so
common at that period. He was unable to restrain his risible faculties
when he saw this ludibrium juvenilis ingenii adopted as a true
history, while he meant it merely as a satire. It is believed that the
Fama Fraternitatis is a production of this ecclesiastic, and that he
published it in order to correct the chemists and enthusiasts of the
time. He himself was called Andreæ, Knight of the Rose-cross (rosæ
crucis) because he had engraven on his seal a cross with four roses.

It is true that Andreæ instituted, in 1620, a fraternitas

christiana, but with quite other views than those which are supposed
to have actuated the Rosecrucians. His object was to correct the
religious opinions of the times, and to separate Christian theology
from scholastic controversies, with which it had been unhappily
intermixed. He himself, in different parts of his writings,
distinguishes carefully between the Rosecrucians and his own
society, and amuses himself with the credulity of the German
theosophists, who adopted so readily his fiction for a series of truths.
It would appear, therefore, that this secret order of Rosecrucians,
notwithstanding the brilliant origin assigned to it, really owes its
birth to the pleasantry of a clergyman of Wirtemburg, who
endeavoured by that means to set bounds to the chimeras of
theosophy, but who unfortunately only increased still more the
adherents of this absurd science.

A crowd of enthusiasts found it too advantageous to propagate

the principles of the rosa crux not to endeavour to unite them into a
sect. Valentine Weigel, a fanatical preacher at Tschoppau, near
Chemnitz, left at his death a prodigious number of followers, who
were already Rosecrucians, without bearing the name. Egidius
Gutmann, of Suabia, was equally a Rosecrucian, without bearing the
name; he condemned all pagan medicines, and affirmed that he
possessed the universal remedy which ennobles man, cures all
diseases, and gives man the power of fabricating gold. “To fly in the
air, to transmute metals, and to know all the sciences,” says he,
“nothing more is requisite than faith.”

Oswald Crollius, of Hesse, must also take his station in this

honourable fraternity of enthusiasts. He was physician to the Prince
of Anhalt, and afterwards a counsellor of the Emperor Rodolphus II.
The introduction to his Basilica Chymica, contains a short but exact
epitome of the opinions of Paracelsus. It is not worth while to give
the reader a notion of his own opinions, which are quite as absurd
and unintelligible as those of Paracelsus and his followers. As a
preparer of chemical medicines he deserves more credit;
antimonium diaphoreticum was a favourite preparation of his, and so
was sulphate of potash, which was known at the time by the name
of specificum purgans Paracelsi: he knew chloride of silver well, and
first gave it the name of luna cornea, or horn silver: fulminating gold
was known to him, and called by him aurum volatile.

This is the place to mention Andrew Libavius, of Halle, in

Saxony, where he was a physician, and a professor in the
gymnasium of Coburg, who was one of the most successful
opponents of the school of Paracelsus, and whose writings do him
much credit. As a chemist, he deserves perhaps to occupy a higher
rank than any of his contemporaries: he was, it is true, a believer in
the possibility of transmuting metals, and boasted of the wonderful
powers of aurum potabile; but he always distinguishes between
rational alchymy and the mental alchymy of Paracelsus. He
separated, with great care, chemistry from the reveries of the
theosophists, and stands at the head of those who opposed most
successfully the progress of superstition and fanaticism, which was
making such an overwhelming progress in his time. His writings are
very numerous and various, and were collected and published at
Frankfort, in 1615, in three folio volumes, under the title of “Opera
omnia Medico-chymica.” Libavius himself died in 1616. It would
occupy more space than we have room for, to attempt an abstract of
his very multifarious works. A few observations will be sufficient: he
wrote no fewer than five different tracts to expose the quackery of
George Amwald, who had boasted that he was in possession of a
panacea, by means of which he was enabled to perform the most
wonderful cures, and which he was in the habit of selling to his
patients at an enormous price; Libavius showed that this boasted
panacea was nothing else than cinnabar, which neither possessed
the virtues ascribed to it by Amwald, nor deserved to be purchased
at so high a price. He entered also into a controversy with Crollius,
and exposed his fanatical and absurd opinions. He engaged likewise
in a dispute with Henning Scheunemann, a physician in Bamberg,
who was a Rosecrucian, and, like the rest of his brethren, profoundly
ignorant not merely of all science, but even of philology. The
expressions of Scheunemann are so obscure, that we learn more of
his opinions from Libavius than from his own writings. He divides the
internal nature of man into seven different degrees, from the seven
changes it undergoes: these are, combustion, sublimation,
dissolution, putrefaction, distillation, coagulation, and tincture. He
gives us likewise an account of ten modifications which the three
elements undergo; but as they are quite unintelligible, it is not worth
while to state them. Libavius had the patience to analyze and expose
all these gallimatias.

Libavius’s system of chemistry, entitled “Alchymia è dispersis

passim optimorum auctorum, veterum et recentiorum exemplis
potissimum, tum etiam preceptis quibusdam operose collecta,
adhibitisque ratione et experientia quanta potuit esse methodo
accurate explicata et in integrum corpus redacta. Accesserunt
tractati nonnulli physici chymici item methodistici.” Frankfort, 1595,
folio, 1597, 4to.—is really an excellent book, considering the period
in which it was written, and deserves the attention of every person
who is interested in the history of chemistry. I shall notice some of
the most remarkable chemical facts which occur in Libavius, and
which I have not observed in any preceding writer; who the actual
discoverer of these facts really was, it is impossible to say, in
consequence of the secrecy which at that time was affected, and the
obscure terms in which chemical facts are in general stated.

He was aware that the fumes of sulphur have the property of

blackening white lead. He was in the habit of purifying cinnabar by
means of arsenic and oxide of lead. He knew the method of giving
glass a red colour by means of gold or its oxide, and was aware of
the method of making artificial gems, such as ruby, topaz, hyacinth,
garnet, balass, by tinging glass by means of metallic oxides. He
points out fluor spar as an excellent flux for various metals and their
oxides. He knew that when metals were fused along with alkaline
bodies, a certain portion of them was converted into slags, and this
portion he endeavoured to recover by the addition of iron filings. He
was aware of the mode of acidifying sulphur by means of nitric acid.
He knew that camphor is soluble in nitric acid, and forms with it a
kind of oil. Of the perchloride of tin he was undoubtedly the
discoverer, as it has continued ever since his time to pass by his
name; namely, fuming liquor of Libavius. He was aware, that alcohol
or spirits could be obtained by distilling the fermented juice of a
great variety of sweet fruits. He procured sulphuric acid by the
distillation of alum and sulphate of iron, as Geber had done long
before his time; but he determined the nature of the acid with more
care than had been done, and showed, that it was the same as that
obtained by the combustion of sulphur along with saltpetre. To him,
therefore, in some measure, are we indebted for the process of
preparing sulphuric acid which is at present practised by
manufacturers.

Libavius found a successor in Angelus Sala, of Vicenza,

physician to the Duke of Mecklenburg-Schwerin, worthy of his
enlightened views and indefatigable exertions to oppose the torrent
of fanaticism which threatened to overwhelm all Europe. Sala was
still more addicted to chemical remedies than Libavius himself; but
he had abjured a multitude of prejudices which had distinguished
the school of Paracelsus. He discarded aurum potabile, and
considered fulminating gold as the only remedy of that metal that
deserved to be prescribed by medical men. He treated the notion of
the existence of a universal remedy with contempt. He described
sulphuret of gold and glass of antimony with a good deal of
precision. He recommended sulphuric acid as an excellent remedy,
and showed that it might be formed indifferently from sulphur, or by
distilling blue vitriol or green vitriol. He affirmed, that the essential
salts obtained from plants had not the same virtues as the plants
from which they are obtained. He showed that sal ammoniac is a
compound of muriatic acid and ammonia. To him, therefore, we are
indebted for the first accurate mention of ammonia. It could not but
have been noticed before by chemists, as it is procured with so
much ease by the distillation of animal substances; but Sala is the
first person who seems to have examined it with attention, and to
have recognised its peculiar properties, and the readiness with which
it saturates the different acids. He showed that iron has the property
of precipitating copper from acid solutions: he pointed out also
various precipitations of metals by other metals. He seems to have
been acquainted with calomel, and to have been aware of at least
some of its medical properties. He says, that fulminating gold loses
its fulminating property when mixed with its own weight of sulphur,
and the sulphur is burnt off it. Many other curious chemical facts
occur in his writings, which it would be too tedious to particularize
here. His works were collected and published in a quarto volume at
Frankfort, in 1647, under the title of “Opera Medico-chymica, quæ
extant omnia.” There was another edition in the same place in 1682,
and an edition was published at Rome in 1650.
 CHAPTER V.
OF VAN HELMONT AND THE IATRO-CHEMISTS.

Paracelsus first raised the dignity of chemistry, by pointing out

the necessity of it for medical men, and by showing the superiority
of chemical medicines over the disgusting decoctions of the
Galenists. Libavius and Angelus Sala had carefully separated
chemistry from the fanatical opinions of the followers of Paracelsus
and the Rosecrucians. But matters were not doomed to remain in
this state. Chemistry underwent a new revolution at this period,
which shook the Spagirical system to its foundation; substituted
other principles, and gave to medicine an aspect entirely new. This
revolution was in a great measure due to the labours of Van
Helmont.

John Baptist Van Helmont was a gentleman of Brabant, and

Lord of Merode, of Royenboch, of Oorschot, and of Pellines. He was
born in Brussels in 1577, and studied scholastic philosophy in
Louvain till the age of seventeen. After having finished his humanity
(as it was termed), he ought, according to the usage of the place, to
have taken his degree of master of arts; but, having reflected on the
futility of these ceremonies, he resolved never to solicit any
academical honour. He next associated himself to the Jesuits, who
then delivered courses of philosophy at Louvain, to the great
displeasure of the professors of that city. One of the most celebrated
of the Jesuits, Martin del Rio, even taught him magic. But Van
Helmont was disappointed in his expectations: instead of that true
wisdom which he hoped to acquire, he met with nothing but
scholastic dialectics, with all its usual subtilties. He was no better
satisfied with the doctrines of the Stoics, who taught him his own
weakness and misery.

At last the works of Thomas à Kempis, and John Taulerus fell

into his hands. These sacred books of mysticism attracted his
attention: he thought that he perceived that wisdom is the gift of the
Supreme Being; that it must be obtained by prayer; and that we
must renounce our own will, if we wish to participate in the influence
of the divine grace. From this moment he imitated Jesus Christ, in
his humility. He abandoned all his property to his sister, renouncing
the privileges of his birth, and laying aside the rank which he had
hitherto occupied in society. It was not long before he reaped the
fruit of these abnegations. A genius appeared to him in all the
important circumstances of his life. In the year 1633 his own soul
appeared to him under the figure of a resplendent crystal.

The desire which he had of imitating in every respect the

conduct of Christ, suggested to him the idea of practising medicine
as a work of charity and benevolence. He began, as was then the
custom of the time, by studying the art of healing in the writings of
the ancients. He read the works of Hippocrates and Galen with
avidity; and made himself so well acquainted with their opinions,
that he astonished all the medical men by the profundity of his
knowledge. But as his taste for mysticism was insatiable, he soon
became disgusted with the writings of the Greeks; an accident led
him to abandon them for ever. Happening to take up the glove of a
young girl afflicted with the itch, he caught that disagreeable
disease. The Galenists whom he consulted, attributed it to the
combustion of the bile, and the saline state of the phlegm. They
prescribed a course of purgatives which weakened him considerably,
without effecting a cure. This circumstance disgusted him with the
system of the humorists, and led him to form the resolution of
reforming medicine, as Paracelsus had done. The works of this
reformer, which he read with attention, awakened in him a spirit of
reformation, but did not satisfy him; because his knowledge, being
much greater than that of Paracelsus, he could not avoid despising
the disgusting egotism, and the ridiculous ignorance of that fanatic.
Though he had already refused a canonicate, he took the degree of
doctor of medicine, in 1599, and afterwards travelled through the
greatest part of France and Italy; and he assures us, that during his
travels, he performed a great number of cures. On his return, he
married a rich Brabantine lady, by whom he had several children;
among others a son, afterwards celebrated under the name of
Francis Mercurius, who edited his father’s works, and who went a
good deal further than his father had done, in all the branches of
theosophy. Van Helmont passed the rest of his life on his estate at
Vilvorde, almost constantly occupied with the processes of his
laboratory. He died in the year 1644, on the 13th of December, at six
o’clock in the evening, after having nearly reached the age of sixty-
seven years.

The system of Van Helmont has for its basis the opinions of the
spiritualists. He arranged even the influence of evil genii, the efforts
of sorcerers, and the power of magicians among the causes which
produce diseases. The archeus of Paracelsus constituted one of the
capital points of his theory; but he ascribed to it a more substantial
nature than Paracelsus had done. This archeus is independent of the
elements; it has no form; for form constitutes the object of
generation, or of production. These ideas are obviously borrowed
from the ancients. The form of Aristotle is not the μορφη, but the
ενεργεια (the power of acting) which matter does not possess.

The archeus draws all the corpuscles of matter to the aid of

fermentation. There are, properly speaking, only two causes of
things; the cause ex qua, and the cause per quam. The first of these
causes is water. Van Helmont considered water as the true principle
of every thing which exists; and he brought forward very specious
arguments in favour of his opinion, drawn both from the animal and
vegetable kingdom. The reader will find his arguments on the
subject, in his treatise entitled “Complexionum atque Mistionum
elementalium Figmentum.”161 The only one of his experiments that,
in the present state of our knowledge, possesses much plausibility, is
the following: He took a large earthen vessel, and put into it 200 lbs.
of earth, previously dried in an oven. This earth he moistened with
rain-water, and planted in it a willow which weighed five pounds.
After an interval of five years, he pulled up his willow and found that
its weight amounted to 169 pounds, and about three ounces. During
these five years, the earth in the pot was duly watered with rain or
distilled water. To prevent the earth in which the willow grew from
being mixed with new earth blown upon it by the winds, the pot was
covered with tin plate, pierced with a great number of holes to admit
the air freely. The leaves which fell every autumn during the
vegetation of the willow in the pot, were not reckoned in the 169
lbs. 3 oz. The earth in the pot being again dried in the oven, was
found to have lost about two ounces of its original weight. Thus 164
lbs. of wood, bark, roots, &c., were produced from water alone.162
This, and several other experiments which it is needless to state,
satisfied him that all vegetable substances are produced from water
alone. He takes it for granted that fish live (ultimately at least) on
water alone; but they contain almost all the peculiar animal
substances that exist in the animal kingdom. Hence he concludes
that animal substances are derived also from pure water.163 His
reasoning with respect to sulphur, glass, stone, metals, &c., all of
which he thinks may ultimately be resolved into water, is not so
satisfactory.

Water produces elementary earth, or pure quartz; but this

elementary earth does not enter into the composition of organic
bodies. Van Helmont excludes fire from the number of elements,
because it is not a substance, nor even the essential form of a
substance. The matter of fire is compound, and differs entirely from
the matter of light. Water gives origin also to the three chemical
principles, salt, sulphur, and mercury, which cannot be considered as
elements or active principles. I do not see clearly how he gets rid of
air; for he says, that though water may be elevated in the form of
vapour, yet that these vapours are no more air than the dust of
marble is water.

According to Van Helmont, a particular disposition of matter, or

a particular mixture of that matter is not necessary for the formation
of a body. The archeus, by its sole power, draws all bodies from
water, when the ferment exists. This ferment, in its quality of a
mean which determines the action of the archeus, is not a formal
being; it can neither be called a substance, nor an accident. It pre-
exists in the seed which is developed by it, and which contains in
itself a second ferment of the seed, the product of the first. The
ferment exhales an odour, which attracts the generating spirit of the
archeus. This spirit consists in an aura vitalis, and it creates the
bodies of nature in its own image, after its own idea. It is the true
foundation of life, and of all the functions of organized bodies; it
disappears only at the instant of death to produce a new creation of
the body, which enters then, for the second time, into fermentation.
The seed, then, is not indispensable to enable an animal to
propagate its species; it is merely necessary that the archeus should
act upon a suitable ferment. Animals produced in this manner are as
perfect as those which spring from eggs.

When water, as an element, ferments, it develops a vapour, to

which Van Helmont gave the name of gas, and which he endeavours
to distinguish from air. This gas contains the chemical principles of
the body from which it escapes in an aerial form by the impulse of
the archeus. It is a substance intermediate between spirit and
matter, the principle of action of life, and of generation of all bodies;
for its production is the first result of the action of the vital spirit on
the torpid ferment, and it may be compared to the chaos of the
ancients.

The term gas, now in common use among chemists, and

applied by them to all elastic fluids which differ in their properties
from common air, was first employed by Van Helmont: and it is
evident, from different parts of his writings, that he was aware that
different species of gas exist. His gas sylvestre was evidently our
carbonic acid gas, for he says, that it is evolved during the
fermentation of wine and beer; that it is formed when charcoal is
burnt in air; and that it exists in the Grotto del Cane. He was aware
that this gas extinguishes a lighted candle. But he says that the
gases from dung, and those formed in the large intestines, when
passed through a candle, catch fire, and exhibit a variety of colours,
like the rainbow.164 To these combustible gases he gave the names
of gas pingue, gas siccum, gas fuliginosum, or endimicum.

Sal ammoniac, he says, may be distilled alone, without danger,

and so may aqua fortis (aqua chrysulca), but if they be mixed
together so much gas sylvestre is produced, that the vessels
employed, however strong, will burst asunder, unless an opening be
left for the escape of this gas.165 In the same way cream of tartar
cannot be distilled in close vessels without breaking them in pieces,
an opening must be left for the escape of the gas sylvestre, which is
generated in such abundance.166 He says, also, that when carbonate
of lime is dissolved in distilled vinegar, or silver in nitric acid,
abundance of gas sylvestre is extricated. From these, and many
other passages which might be quoted, it is evident that Van
Helmont was aware of the evolution of gas during the solution of
carbonates and metals in acids, and during the distillation of various
animal and vegetable substances, that he had anticipated the
experiments made so many years after by Dr. Hales, and for which
that philosopher got so much credit. But it would be going too far to
say, as some have done, that Van Helmont knew accurately the
differences which characterize the different gases which he
produced, or indeed that he distinguished accurately between them.
For it is evident, from the passages quoted and from many others
which occur in his treatise, De Flatibus, that carbonic acid, protoxide
of azote, and deutoxide of azote, and probably also muriatic acid gas
were all considered by him as constituting one and the same gas.
How, indeed, could he distinguish between different gases when he
was not acquainted with the method of collecting them, or of
determining their properties? These observations of Van Helmont,
then, though they do him much credit, and show how far his
chemical knowledge was superior to that of the age in which he
lived, take nothing from the merit or the credit of those illustrious
chemists who, in the latter half of the eighteenth century, devoted
themselves to the investigation of this part of chemistry, at that time
attended with much difficulty, but intimately connected with the
subsequent progress which the science has made.

Van Helmont was aware, also, that the bulk of air is diminished
when bodies are burnt in it. He considered respiration to be
necessary in this way: the air was drawn into the blood by the
pulmonary arteries and veins, and occasioned a fermentation in it
requisite for the continuance of life.

Gas, according to Van Helmont, has an affinity with the principle

of the movement of the stars, to which he gave the name of blas. It
had, he supposed, much influence on all sublunary bodies. He
admitted in the ferment which gives birth to plants, a substance
which, after the example of Paracelsus, he called pessas, and to the
metallic ferment he gave the name of bur.167

The archeus of Van Helmont, like that of Paracelsus, has its seat
in the stomach. It is the same thing as the sentient soul. This notion
of the nature and seat of the archeus was founded on the following
experiment: He swallowed a quantity of aconitum (henbane). In two
hours he experienced the most disagreeable sensation in his
stomach. His feeling and understanding seemed to be concentrated
in that organ, for he had no longer the free use of his mental
faculties. This feeling induced him to place the seat of understanding
in the stomach, of volition in the heart, and of memory in the brain.
The faculty of desire, to which the ancients had assigned the liver as
its organ, he placed in the spleen. What confirmed him still more in
the idea that the stomach is the seat of the soul, is the fact, that life
sometimes continues after the destruction of the brain, but never, he
alleges, after that of the stomach. The sentient soul acts constantly
by means of the vital spirits, which are of a resplendent nature, and
the nerves serve merely to moisten these spirits which constitute the
mediums of sensation. By virtue of the archeus man is much nearer
to the realm of spirits and the father of all the genii, than to the
world. He thinks that Paracelsus’s constant comparison of the human
body with the world is absurd. Yet Van Helmont, at least in his
youth, was a believer in magnetism, which he employed as a
method of explaining the effect of sympathy.

The archeus exercises the greatest influence on digestion, and

he has chiefly the stomach and spleen under his superintendence.
These two organs form a duumvirate in the body; for the stomach
cannot act alone and without the concurrence of the spleen.
Digestion is produced by means of an acid liquor, which dissolves the
food, under the superintendence of the archeus. Van Helmont
assures us that he had himself tasted this acid liquor in the stomach
of birds. Heat, strictly speaking, does not favour digestion; for we
see no increase of the digestive powers during the most ardent
fever. Nor are the powers of digestion wanting in fishes, although
they want the animal heat which is requisite for mammiferous
animals. Certain birds even digest fragments of glass, which,
certainly, simple heat would not enable them to do. The pylorus is,
in some measure, the director of digestion. It acts by a peculiar and
immaterial power, in virtue of a blas, and not as a muscle. It opens
and shuts the stomach according to the orders of the archeus. It is
in it, therefore, that the causes of derangement of digestion must be
sought for.

The duumvirate just spoken of is the cause of natural sleep,

which does not belong to the soul, as far as it resides in the
stomach. Sleep is a natural action, and one of the first vital actions.
Hence the reason why the embryo sleeps without ceasing. At any
rate it is not true that sleep is owing to vapours which mount to the
brain. During sleep the soul is naturally occupied, and it is then that
the deity approaches most intimately to man. Accordingly, Van
Helmont informs us, that he received in dreams the revelation of
several secrets, which he could not have learnt otherwise.

The duumvirate operates the first digestion, of which, Van

Helmont enumerates six different species. When the acid, which is
prepared for digestion, passes into the duodenum it is neutralized by
the bile of the gall-bladder. This constitutes the second digestion. To
the bile of the gall-bladder, Van Helmont gave the name of fel, and
he carefully distinguished it from the biliary principle in the mass of
the blood. This last he called bile. The fel is not an excrementitious
matter, but a humour necessary to life, a true vital balsam. Van
Helmont endeavoured to show by various experiments that it is not
bitter.

The third digestion takes place in the vessels of the mesentery,

into which the gall-bladder sends the prepared fluid. The fourth
digestion is operated in the heart, where the red blood becomes
more yellow and more volatile by the addition of the vital spirits.
This is owing to the passage of the vital spirit from the posterior to
the anterior ventricle, through the pores of the septum. At the same
time the pulse is produced, which of itself develops heat; but does
not regulate it in any manner, as the ancients pretended that it did.
The fifth digestion consists in the conversion of the arterial blood
into vital spirit. It takes place principally in the brain, but is produced
also throughout all the body. The sixth digestion consists in the
elaboration of the nutritive principle in each member, where the
archeus prepares its own nourishment by means of the vital spirits.
Thus, there are six digestions: the number seven has been chosen
by nature for a state of repose.

From the preceding sketch of the physiology of Van Helmont, it

is evident that he paid little or no regard to the structure of the parts
in explaining the functions. In his pathology we find the same
passion for spiritualism. He admitted, indeed, the importance of
anatomy, but he regretted that the pathological part of that science
had been so little cultivated. As the archeus is the foundation of life
and of all the functions, it is plain that the diseases can neither be
derived from the four cardinal humours, nor from the disposition or
the action of opposite things; the proximate cause of diseases must
be sought for in the sufferings, the anger, the fear, and the other
affections of the archeus, and their remote cause may be considered
as the ideal seed of the archeus. Disease, in his opinion, is not a
negative state or a mere absence of health, it is a substantial and
active thing as well as a state of health. Most of the diseases which
attack certain parts or members of the body result from an error in
the archeus, who sends his ferment from the stomach in which he
resides into the other parts of the body. Van Helmont explained in
this way not only the epilepsy and madness, but likewise the gout,
which does not proceed from a flux, and has not its seat in the limb
in which the pain resides, but is always owing to an error in the vital
spirit. It is true that the character of the gout acts upon the semen
in which the vital spirit principally manifests its action, and that in
this way diseases are propagated in the act of generation; but if,
during life instead of altering the semen it is carried to the liquid of
the articulations, this is a proof of the prudence of nature, which
lavishes all her cares on the preservation of the species, and loves
better to alter the humours of the articulations than the semen itself.
The gout acidifies the liquors of the articulations, which is then
coagulated by the acids. The duumvirate is the cause of apoplexy,
vertigo, and particularly of a species of asthma, which Van Helmont
calls caducus pulmonalis. Pleurisy is produced in a similar way. The
archeus, in a movement of rage, sends acrid acids to the lungs,
which occasion an inflammation. Dropsy is also owing to the anger
of the archeus, who prevents the secretions of the kidneys from
going on in the usual way.

Of all the diseases, fever appeared to him most conformable to

his notions of the unlimited power of the archeus. The causes of
fever are all much more proper to offend the archeus, than to alter
the structure of parts and the mixture of humours. The cold fit is
owing to a state of fear and consternation, into which the archeus is
thrown, and the hot stage results from his disordered movements.
All fevers have their peculiar seat in the duumvirate.

Van Helmont was in general much more successful in refuting

the scholastic opinions by which the practice of medicine was
regulated in his time, than in establishing his own. We are struck
with the force of his arguments against the Galenical doctrine of
fever, and against the influence of the cardinal humours on the
different kinds of fever. He refuted no less vehemently the idea of
the putridity of the blood, while that liquid circulates in the vessels.
Perhaps he carried the opposite doctrine too far; but his opinions
have had a good effect upon subsequent medical theory, and
medical men learned from them to make less use of the term
putridity. The phrase mixture of humours, not more intelligible,
however, came to be substituted for it.

Van Helmont’s theory of urinary calculi deserves peculiar

attention, because it exhibits the germ of a more rational
explanation of these concretions than had been previously
attempted by physiologists. Van Helmont was aware that Paracelsus,
who ascribed these concretions to tartar, had formed an idea of their
nature, which a careful chemical analysis would immediately refute.
He satisfied himself that urinary calculi differ completely from
common stones, and that they do not exist in the food or drink
which the calculous person had taken. Tartar, he says, precipitates
from wine, not as an earth, but as a crystallized salt. In like manner,
the natural salt of urine precipitates from that liquid, and gives origin
to calculi. We may imitate this natural process by mixing spirit of
urine with rectified alcohol. Immediately an offa alba is precipitated.

It is needless to observe that Van Helmont was mistaken, in

supposing that this offa was the matter of calculus. Spirit of urine
was a strong solution of carbonate of ammonia. The alcohol
precipitated this salt; so that his offa was merely carbonate of
ammonia. Nor is there the shadow of evidence that alcohol, as Van
Helmont thought it did, ever makes its way into the mass of
humours; yet his notion of the origin of calculi is not less accurate,
though of course he was ignorant of the chemical nature of the
various substances which constitute these calculi. From this
reasoning Van Helmont was induced to reject the term tartar,
employed by Paracelsus. To avoid all false interpretations he
substitutes the word duelech, to denote the state in which the spirit
of urine precipitates and gives origin to these calculous concretions.

As all diseases proceeded in his opinion from the archeus, the

object of his treatment was to calm the archeus, to stimulate it, and
to regulate its movements. To accomplish these objects he relied
upon dietetics, and upon acting on the imaginations of his patients.
He considered certain words as very efficacious in curing the
diseases of the archeus. He admitted the existence of the universal
medicine, to which he gave the names of liquor alkahest, ens
primum salium, primus metallus. Mercurials, antimonials, opium, and
wine, are particularly agreeable to the archeus, when in a state of
delirium from fever.

Among the mercurial preparations, he praises what he calls

mercurius diaphoreticus as the best. He gives no account of the
mode of preparing it; but from some circumstances I think it must
have been calomel. He considers it as a sovereign remedy in fevers,
dropsies, diseases of the liver, and ulcers of the lungs. He employed
the red oxide of mercury as an external application to ulcers. The
principal antimonial preparations which he employed were the
hydrosulphuret, or golden sulphur, and the deutoxide, or
antimonium diaphoreticum. This last medicine was used in scruple
doses—a proof of its great inertness compared with the protoxide of
antimony.

Opium he considered as a fortifying and calming medicine. It

contains an acrid salt and a bitter oil, which give it the virtue of
putting a stop to the errors of the archeus, when it was sending its
acid ferment into other acid parts of the body. Van Helmont assures
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