Background
Jan Baptist van Helmont was born on January 12, 1580 near Brussels, Belgium.
Jan Baptist van Helmont was born on January 12, 1580 near Brussels, Belgium.
He received his degree in medicine at the University of Louvain and spent most of his life investigating chemical processes.
Van Helmont traveled to Switzerland and Italy (1600–1602) and to France and England (1602–1605), gaining practical medical skills that he put to use during an outbreak of plague in Antwerp in 1605.
Believing all physiological processes had a chemical basis, Helmont tried to explain digestion as based on ferments.
Van Helmont published very little until near the end of his life:“Of the Magnetic Curing of Wounds” (1621), also published a treatise on the waters of Spa (1624).