Van Helmont had several other famous nostrums, with which he pretended
to perform wonders, as quacks have done in all ages, and as some do now:
for empiricism was never more in fashion than at the present day, and
the chemical art has supplied them with many more arcana and nostrums
than the ancients had in all their antidotes and theriacas, etc. since
chemistry was made subservient to medicine. Van Helmont, nevertheless
was a learned man, and acquired a great name and reputation, at least
for some time; but, as neither his theory nor his practice were founded
on nature and reason, nor conformable to them, the more judicious
physicians soon saw their errors, as well as the fallacy of his new
invented chemical terms and unmeaning phrases, which only contained the
shadow and not the substance of the medical science; therefore both his
chemical theory and hot regimen, together with his writings, sunk soon
after his death, into a state of merited oblivion.
Notwithstanding that the science of chemistry was greatly improved by
these extraordinary men, who invented or discovered many useful
remedies, which they introduced into the practice of medicine in a no
less extraordinary manner, and thereby pointed out the way for others to
follow them; yet we must allow that the more able and learned chemists
have greatly enriched and improved the materia medica since, by making
many curious experiments, and thereby discovering several new and very
efficacious medicines, not only from the semi-metals, mercury and
antimony, and the various chemical preparations from them, but from the
more perfect metals, and some other mineral bodies, as well as from a
great variety of remedies which are prepared both from vegetable and
animal substances, as salts, oils, essences, spirits, tinctures,
elixirs, extracts and many more needless here to be mentioned, but all
of which are known to physicians.
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