Spiritus rector

Boerhaave strongly believed that the creation is wholly inspired by the Creator and that He gives every natural body its own unique character. He argued that God had lodged a spiritus rector or presiding spirit into all tenacious and durable matter. This spirit is so subtle that it is only perceivable by its smell or taste. It determines the peculiar character of a body and animates... 

Boerhaave states that some adepts claim to have seen the spirit sealed up in the sulphur of metals and fossils and that the same spirits when freed are exceedingly active, able to insinuate into any other body and of great efficacy against diseases, which was a common opinion in alchemy. Boerhaave referred to the general opinion that sulphur, or rather philosophical sulphur, was an abstract principle, an inherent constitutive element within matter. In the forming of metals, mercury was said to consist of matter, and sulphur of form. In a refined form sulphur was generally symbolised by the sun, hence the mentioning of spiritus rector as the son of the sun. Boerhaave does not discuss the alchemical notions any further. He did not deny the tmth of the matter, but since he felt that he had not mastered the subject he left it to the adepts. ... 

Boerhaave described a process of natural circulation in order to explain how the spiritus rector lodges itself in a natural body. This process is comparable with the process of natural circulation as described by Nicholas Lefebvre in Lefebvre, N. (1664). A Compkat Body of Chemistry. London and by Nicholas Lemery in Lemery, N. (1696). Cours de Chymie. Paris. 

Unfortunately Boerhaave does not tell how the adepts came to their measurement of the spiritus rector. 

Despite this seeming rejection of the chemical elements, Boerhaave found that he could not remove all the hypothetical principles that shaped earlier, chymical explanations of phenomena central to chymical practice. The Theory section of the Elementa chemiae was full of entities that he referred to as principles or elements. In fact, Boerhaave presented a list of chemists s elements immediately following his general critique of those same elements. Included on the list were four of the instruments - fire, air, water, and earth - and three others the Alcohol of wine, Mercury (of metals), and the Spiritus Rector of every body. 31 But Boerhaave... 

For the Spiritus rector experiments, see Boerhaave, Elements, 47-49 on Boerhaave s Mercury (the alchemical mercury principle), see John C. Powers. Herman Boerhaave and the Pedagogical Reform of Eighteenth-Century Chemistry, Ph.D. Dissertation, Indiana University, 2001, 121-33. 

It is not clear who must be regarded the spiritus rector of the nomenclatural enterprise of 1787—Lavoisier or Guyton de Morveau. In the Memoire he read to the Academy in April 1787 and which opened the Methode, Lavoisier gave full credit to Guyton s previous efforts concerning nomenclature, which thus appear likely as the... 

A spiritus rector, or presiding spirit, a sovereign oil, the true seat of this spirit, an acid salt, a neutral salt, an alcaline salt, either fix d or volatile, an oil mixed with salt after the manner of a soap, and a saponaceous juice hence arising, an oil firmly adhering to the earth, so as scarce to be separable therefrom and lastly earth itself, the genuine firm basis of all the rest these are the principles, or matters, which a well-conducted chemistry has hitherto produced from plants. ... 

Despite the fact that his class of chemical principles overlapped with his class of natural juices—oils and the spiritus rector appear in both—Boerhaave demarcated the simple chemical principles from the natural juices of plants. His list of eight principles is presented at the end of a chapter on the history of plants without even alluding to the possibility that the juices of plants might be unified with this list. On the contrary, Boerhaave even emphasized explicitly that his history of plants was finished before he went on to present his list of chemical principles. 

The spiritus rector of Boerhaave (Vol. II, p. 757) was retained by Fourcroy imder the name aroma but he later said the odour of each essential oil is its... 

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