VAN HELMONT'S WORKS, AND CERTAIN SPECIALITIES IN HIS LIFE.
Voilà mon conte.—Je ne sçay s'il est vray; mais, je l'ay ainsi ouy conter.—Possible que cela est faux, possible que non.—Je m'en rapporte à ce qui en est. Il ne sera pas damné qui le croira, ou décroira.
BRANTÔME.
“The works of Van Helmont,” Dr. Aikin says, “are now only consulted as curiosities; but with much error and jargon, they contain many shrewd remarks, and curious speculations.”
How little would any reader suppose from this account of them, or indeed from any thing which Dr. Aikin has said concerning this once celebrated person, that Van Helmont might as fitly be classed among enthusiasts as among physicians, and with philosophers as with either; and that like most enthusiasts it is sometimes not easy to determine whether he was deceived himself or intended to deceive others.
He was born at Brussels in the year 1577, and of noble family. In his Treatise entitled Tumulus Pestis (to which strange title a stranger1 explanation is annexed) he gives a sketch of his own history, saying, “imitemini, si quid forte boni in eâ occurrerit.” He was a devourer of books, and digested into common places for his own use, whatever he thought most remarkable in them, so that few exceeded him in diligence, but most, he says, in judgement. At the age of seventeen, he was appointed by the Professors Thomas Fyenus, Gerard de Velleers, and Stornius, to read surgical lectures in the Medical College at Louvain. Eheu, he exclaims, præsumsi docere, quæ ipse nesciebam! and his presumption was increased because the Professors of their own accord appointed him to this Lectureship, attended to hear him, and were the Censors of what he delivered. The writers from whom he compiled his discourses were Holerius, Tagaultius, Guido, Vigo, Ægineta, and “the whole tribe of Arabian authors.” But then he began, and in good time, to marvel at his own temerity and inconsiderateness in thinking that by mere reading, he could be qualified to teach what could be learnt only by seeing, and by operating, and by long practice, and by careful observation: and this distrust in himself was increased when he discovered that the Professors could give him no further light than books had done. However at the age of twenty-two he was created Doctor of Medicine in the same University.
1 Lector, titulus quem legis, terror lugubris, foribus affixus,
intus mortem, mortis genus, et hominum
nunciat flagrum. Sta, et inquire, quid hoc?
Mirare. Quid sibi vult
Tumuli Epigraphe Pestis?
Sub anatome abii, non obii; quamdiu malesuada invidia
Momi, et hominum ignara cupido,
me fovebunt.
Ergo heic
Non funus, non cadaver, non mors, non sceleton
non luctus, non contagium.
ÆTERNO DA GLORIAM
Quod Pestis jam desiit, sub Anatomes proprio supplicio.
Very soon he began to repent that he, who was by birth noble, should have been the first of his family to choose the medical profession, and this against the will of his mother, and without the knowledge of his other relations. “I lamented, he says, with tears the sin of my disobedience, and regretted the time and labour which had been thus vainly expended: and often with a sorrowful heart I intreated the Lord that he would be pleased to lead me to a vocation not of my own choice, but in which I might best perform his will; and I made a vow that to whatever way of life he might call me, I would follow it, and do my utmost endeavour therein to serve him. Then, as if I had tasted of the forbidden fruit, I discovered my own nakedness. I saw that there was neither truth nor knowledge in my putative learning; and thought it cruel to derive money from the sufferings of others; and unfitting that an art founded upon charity, and conferred upon the condition of exercising compassion, should be converted into a means of lucre.”