Background
Jan Baptist van Helmont was born on January 12, 1580 near Brussels, Belgium.
(Lugduni Lyons published Medicine)
Lugduni Lyons published Medicine
http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0085SAI4W/?tag=2022091-20
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).
He was the first to adopt the melting point of ice and the boiling point of water as standards of temperature measurement.
He demonstrated the fact that plants absorb some of their nourishment from the air.
Van Helmont is remembered today largely for his ideas on spontaneous generation, his 5-year tree experiment, and his introduction of the word "gas" (from the Greek word chaos) into the vocabulary of scientists.
After his death his son published all of his writings under the title Ortus Medicinae ("The Fount of Medicine") at Amsterdam in 1648.
