Principles Paracelsian

This distinction between "theoretical" and "practical" chemistry was one observed in textbooks throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. A tradition of "philosophical chemistry" answered Libavius s challenge for chemistry to abandon alchemical magic and Paracelsian iatrochemistry in favor of newly philosophic principles in chemistry. Jacob Bamer s seventeenth-century work, Chymiaphilosophica, is an early example later, more famous texts in chemical philosophy are those of John Dalton (1808), Davy (1812), and Dumas (1837). 14 But texts called chemical philosophy were fewer than those in "natural philosophy," and very few texts in chemical philosophy were written after 1840.15 Why was this the case ... 

A considerable part of the book is an attack on the Paracelsian theory of three principles. Boyle argues, for example, that none of the principles can be used to explain how a prism breaks up white light into different colors. Furthermore, authors who argued in favor of the three principles generally described them in such obscure ways that it was doubtful that they understood these supposed principles themselves. 

So these Paracelsian principles were not meant to be elements in themselves, but rather a material manifestation of the ancient elements. By the end of the seventeenth century, things had moved... 

By the end of the seventeenth century, the old traditional elements from Aristotle had been either abandoned by the new Paracelsian iatrochymists or absorbed under new terminology. Paracelsus tria prima of mercury, SULPHUR, and salt became the new set of elements or principles, each more narrowly focused on a single property than had been the four elements of Aristotle. Yet the tria prima clearly derived from the older tradition. Salt assumed the role of the Aristotelian earth, while sulphur took that of FIRE. The mercury of Paracelsus rather absorbed the characteristics of both AIR and water, becoming the carrier of all spiritual, i.e., volatile qualities of the products of fire analysis. Mercury also carried the basic metallic properties from the mercury/sulphur theory of metals brought to the Latin West from Arabic alchemy. 

Chemists inherited from the sixteenth century an odd mix of the Aristotelian elements and the Paracelsian principles. In attacking the scholastic philosophy, " Paracelsus (1493-1541) had not abandoned the four elements, but he had introduced the tria prima of Salt, Sulphur, and Mercury without clarifying the relationship between the two systems. The French Paracelsians who taught at the Jardin were, on the... 

Etienne de Clave later produced a more systematic treatise in which he pointed out the shortcomings of the Paracelsian and Aristotelian philosophies on analytic grounds. He argued that a natural or physical principle had to be a simple and homogeneous body and therefore could not be compounded. Ideally, the elements of nature should be discovered through the resolution of mixts into their principles, which the Aristotelian theory did not prescribe. Furthermore, such resolution had to be an exact exquisite purification c the last or final reduction of... 

Romberg s Treatise on the sulphur principle alerts us to the difficulties he experienced in implementing the analytic/synthetic ideal of chemical principles. The old alchemical/Paracelsian chemical philosophy dictated that the sulphur principle should be the singularly active principle, which conferred activity on all other bodies. Chemical analysis yielded a range of sulphurs or inflammable oils, which were decomposed further into aqueous matters, earths, and salts, without providing a candidate substance for the sulphur principle. The Boylean natural philosophy demanded that the chemical principles obtained in distillation... 

Paracelsus seems to have believed in the four Aristotelian elements, but he rejected almost everything else of the ancient system. Instead, he promoted the concept of the three principles, namely sulfur, mercury, and salt. These three principles were not exactly the materials they were named after, since they really represented concepts sulfur was combustion and represented the soul, mercury was fluidity and represented the spirit, and salt was inertness and represented the body. By their combination and balance, they could explain the behavior of the world and, in particular, the body. Paracelsus wrote extensively, but most of his work was not published until after his death. His writing style was complex and often convoluted, full of obscure references, metaphors, and religious symbolism. For example, when describing the relation of sulfur, mercury, and salt, he said, The Sulphur resolves itself by the spirit of Salt in the liquor of Mercury, which of itself is a liquid distributed from heaven to earth, and is the albumen of the heaven, and the mid space. 6 It would not be clear to a non-Paracelsian what this description meant. 

With a clarity of mind which cannot be too much admired, Lavoisier saw what had to be done to create a modern science ot chemistry out of the chaotic legacy in which were jumbled the Greek doctrine ot elements, old Stoic vestiges of fire and flux, Paracelsian principles ot salt, sultur and mercury, aclchemistical distillations and purifications, mineralogical lore, and die proliteration of laboratory discoveries of his own time. And to clear his mind - perhaps, too, to fix it - he wrote down in his laboratory register what he meant to do tor the rest of his life. ... 

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