Background
Martin Ruland the Younger was born on November 11, 1569, in the Bavarian town of Lauingen, the son of the physician and alchemist Martin Ruland the Elder, who, in the last years of his life, was physician to Emperor Rudolf II.
1612
Title page "Lexicon Alchemiae" by Martin Ruland the Younger.
University of Basel, Basel, Basel-City, Switzerland
Ruland received the Doctor of Medicine from the University of Basel in 1587.
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1571
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1593
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1607
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1611
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1611
philosopher physician scientist scholars iatrochemistry
Martin Ruland the Younger was born on November 11, 1569, in the Bavarian town of Lauingen, the son of the physician and alchemist Martin Ruland the Elder, who, in the last years of his life, was physician to Emperor Rudolf II.
Ruland received the Doctor of Medicine from the University of Basel in 1587.
Nothing is known of Ruland until 1594 when he was a physician at Regensburg. His alchemical interests first emerged in two works of 1595 and 1597, which argued that the gold tooth reportedly cut by a Silesian boy was genuine and could have been naturally generated, a conclusion of some alchemical significance. In 1600 Ruland published an extensive discussion of the nature, causes, symptoms, and treatment of the morbus hungaricus, which was in all probability typhus. He also proposed a number of remedies, many of which involved chemical preparations.
The major aspects of Ruland’s thoughts were his alchemical philosophy of nature and his advocacy of chemical medicines. In 1606, while at Regensburg, he was charged with dispensing poisonous medicines. Even as late as the turn of the seventeenth century, Paracelsian medical reforms and iatrochemical remedies had little official approval in Germany.
In 1607 Ruland was appointed physician to Emperor Rudolf II and settled in Prague. Lexicon alchemiae, including much Paracelsian terminology, was issued posthumously in 1612.
Ruland's interest in alchemy and iatrochemistry may have developed while he was at Basel or may have been entirely due to the influence of his father, who favored Paracelsian reforms and the use of chemically prepared medicines.
Ruland's attitude was moderate; he did not entirely reject the traditional Galenic position, but his concept of medicine was generally based upon Paracelsian theories. Because nature and man are primarily chemical in composition and function, he believed, the physician should study chemistry in order to understand nature and should use chemicals to aid nature in curing diseases. He, therefore, concluded that chemically prepared remedies were safe and legitimate. Ruland's works illustrate the tension between traditional Galenist medical theory and the reformist iatrochemists, as well as between individuals of similar outlook, such as himself and his major opponent, Johann Oberndorfer, thereby indicating the complexity of medical controversies at that time.
Ruland's cosmology was derived from Renaissance Neoplatonic Hermeticism, according to which the cosmos is a unity modeled on divine archetypes. All aspects of the universe are interconnected by spiritual forces, and nature is strictly chemical in its operation. Salt, sulfur, and mercury, the three principles of Paracelsus, are the basis of all things; and the principal instrument for the study of nature is fire and the alchemical processes involving it. On the basis of this cosmology, Ruland argued that the transmutation of metals into gold was possible with the aid of the philosophers' stone, which was also the universal medicine capable of curing all diseases.