Les Oeuvres de Jean Baptiste Van Helmont Traittant des Principes de Medecine et Physique pour la guerison assuree des Maladies: de la traduction de M. Jean le Conte.

Lyon,: Jean-Antoine Huguetan & Guillaume Barbier, 1670., 1670. Small 4to. [8], 396 pp. Title printed in red & black. Title vignette, woodcut head & tail pieces; title margin with ownership signature excised & replaced with paper filling the space, water-staining throughout. Original full vellum, manuscript spine title, speckled edges, yapp. Rubber stamp: Doctor Mario E. Spada. Very good. First French translation of Van Helmont's collected works, which is more often seen in the 1671 second printing. ?Although Helmont's Ortus medicinae was published posthumously, it reached a wide audience, and translations into English, French, German, and Flemish soon followed. The French translation published in 1671 is frequently described as the first edition because copies of this first issue of 1670 are so extremely rare. The work brings together Helmont's doctrine and concepts and clearly reveals how heavily mysticism influenced his thinking about scientific matters. Denounced by the Inquisition in 1624, Helmont was imprisoned for two years starting in 1634. His name was finally cleared in 1646, two years after his death.? - Heirs of Hippocrates, 410. / Van Helmont is considered one of the fathers of biochemistry. This is due to his adding the element ?gas? to the standard vapors of water, oils, smoke, as given by Aristotle. Thorndike calls him ?the most original alchemical or iatrochemical writer of the first half of the seventeenth century, in fact the most so since Paracelsus.? PROVENANCE: Doctor Mario E. Spada - Dr. Hernan Demonti. REFERENCES: DSB VI, pp. 253-9; Partington II, pp. 209-43; Thorndike, VII, pp. 218-40.