Latrochemical school

Jean Baptiste van Helmont (1577-1644), founder of the latrochemical School, proposed that acid might be a mineral acid, such as nitric or hydrochloric acid. He produced spiritus salis marini-spints of sea salt (hydrochloric acid)-by distillation of salt and clay and noted that it could dissolve human kidney stones (duelech) in much the same manner as juice from the stomach of a bird. 

Hypothesis a tentative statement used to explain some aspect of nature and tested through an experiment latrochemical medical school of thought that attributed disease to chemical imbalances in the body... 

The members of the latromathematical School cared little for the new sdence of chemistry, and their postulates faded into such sterile eccentricities as the proposal by Pitcairn to base the whole of medical practice on mechanical principles. Thus, in 1727, Pitcairn questioned the latrochemical group "... Why upon the digestion of food upon the stomach, which is easily [as] digestible as the food, yet the stomach itself should not be dissolved This prescient question was, of course, irresolvable, and almost 250 years would pass before an explanation based on the gastric barrier would even approach resolution of this issue. 

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