Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 87.djvu/23

Rh or infallible. Free criticism and independent thought once aroused could not again be contented with blind adhesion to any unchanging system of doctrines.

Very naturally the period of chemical activity following the shattering of long-accepted dogmas was characterized by many wild and fantastic notions. Many of the most extravagant claims of alchemy and of marvelous medical nostrums are found in the literature of the latter part of the sixteenth and of the first half of the seventeenth century. But much was done, on the other hand, in developing chemical facts. Men like Van Helmont and Glauber, while retaining much of the mysticism and obscurity of Paracelsus and earlier chemists, yet contributed in no unimportant way to the constructive work of adding to established chemical facts as the result of their experiments, though indeed contributing little of permanent value to chemical theory or generalization. Chemists were generally either adherents of the Aristotelian elements, or of the three elements of Paracelsus, according as they belonged to the conservative or radical parties. Nevertheless, there was much independent speculation and theorizing, though rarely on a scientific basis. The new freedom found expression in extravagances of ignorance and superstition, in charlatanry and imposture, as well as in much earnest and valuable labor. But at all events, chemistry was now, at last, very much alive, and the mission of chemistry was at last recognized as of importance and dignity. Werner Rolfink, professor of anatomy, surgery, botany, medicine and chemistry at Marburg, is said to have been the first officially recognized professor of chemistry in Germany— 1629. A chair of chemistry was established early in the same century at the University of Paris, and a Scotch physician, William Davisson, was the first incumbent. In 1635 he published a text-book on chemistry for the use of his students, a work which passed through many editions.

The University of Leyden is credited with the first chemical laboratory at a European university, and the distinguished De la Boe Sylvius was the professor of the theory and practise of chemistry as well as of medicine. He was a strong adherent of the chemical medicines. Other early university laboratories were at Altorf, 1663, Stockholm, 1683.

Thus was beginning to be realized the ideal so confidently maintained though vaguely realized by Paracelsus, of exalting the study of chemistry and recognizing its importance in the development of medical science. How important the interrelation of these two sciences was to be in our day revealed, not even the imagination of Paracelsus could have dreamed.

As Paracelsus in the sixteenth century gave the first important impulse to the development of modern chemistry, so, in the middle of the seventeenth century. Sir Robert Boyle may be said to have