Background
David Kellner was born c. mid-seventeenth century in a small village, Liebertwolkwitz, situated about 10 kilometres from Leipzig. His father was probably Philipp Kellner, who in 1655 is mentioned as a senior schoolmaster in Liebertwolkwitz. According to a manuscript notation in the Kirchenchronik, Philipp Kellner came from Roßwein, a city in the Landkreis Döbeln between Dresden, Leipzig, and Chemnitz. He had at least four sons. The eldest was probably Philipp as he got his father's Christian name. Next to him came Christian and Johann.
Education
Kellner studied medicine in Helmstedt when the renowned physician and polymath Hermann Conring taught there. He received his doctor’s degree in Helmstedt in 1670. He wrote two surgical dissertations, De ossium constitutione naturali et praeternaturali and De empyemate. He dedicated the second of these, a work on festering wounds, to Johann Langguth, a physician in the service of Duke Ernst of Saxony.
Career
Kellner later worked in Nordhausen. In the majority of his own writings, as well as in those he edited, he signed himself as “Practitioner in the Imperial Free City of Nordhausen, and Body and Court Physician of Royal Prussia, Princely Saxony, and the County of Stolberg.” Beyond this, he left no references to himself, except for a remark in the dedication to the reader in his Schenkeldiener (1690). He relates there that he wrote the book in 1683 when he was with Duke Heinrich, his prince, and overlord, in Römhild (Franconia). It was dedicated to the surgeon and barber of Gotha, the city of the prince’s residence, Johann Scheib, whom Kellner calls his friend and patron. The Schenkeldiener is a reference work on bone injuries and includes prescriptions as well as advice on diagnosis and therapy.
The names of the scholars with whom Kellner associated are not known. In his works, he cites, in the traditional manner, only ancient or older German authors, with the exception of famous Kameralisten such as Johann Joachim Becher and Wilhelm von Schroder. The latter’s Fürstliche Schatz- und Rentkammer (“Princely Treasury and Revenue Office”) is the opening chapter of a work on mining and saltworks that Kellner edited.
Views
Kellner’s interest in scientific writing manifested itself mainly in the field of metallurgical chemistry. He wished above all to free this literature, and indeed all scientific publication, from the fantasies of alchemists. Toward this end, he wrote for a lay audience and for future scientists, rather than for an exclusive circle of initiates.
Kellner was undoubtedly influenced by Conring, who waged violent battles against alchemy and esoteric medicine. His comedy about the “harmful Society of Alchemists” (1700) displays a fertile inventiveness that is typical of the baroque. In the play he excoriates alchemy. The climax is a scene in which seven alchemists mix, cook, and toil - to no apparent purpose - in the kitchen of a baron who has been taken in by their promises.
Kellner himself once fell under suspicion: he was accused of being one of the “chemical heretics.” He was obliged to defend himself in an apologetic, but none the less polemical, “Epistle to the Unnamed Authors of the German Purgatory of Refining.”
Kellner’s writings were considered as contributions to the science of assaying. Kellner sought to state, as clearly as possible, prescriptions and methods for experimentation. He asserted, however, that “it is highly necessary for all who are devoted to chemistry and medicine, and not just for those whose own profession is metal assaying, to know what is contained in the mineral kingdom, and how it might be purified, smelted, and even improved.”
