Pictures from the Past of the Healing Arts / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 18-19. (Budapest, 2000)

Pictures from the Past of the Healing Arts - Guide to the Exhibition

the 18th the so-called phlogiston theory dominated chemistry. Phlogiston was supposed to be the material or substance of fire but not fire itself. According to the ideas of Johann Joachim Becher (1635-1682) and especially those of Georg Ernest Stahl (1660-1734) 'metals were composed of a calx, different for each metal, combined with phlogiston, which was the same in all metals and common to all combustibles. When a metal was calcined in the air, phlogiston was evolved and a calx was left behind.'' Though scientifically unrealistic the experimentation of this theory invented indispensable techniques which contributed to the foundations of modern chemistry. Parallel to the great political revolutions, which basically re-shaped social systems at the end of the 18th century, a revolution took place in chemistry too. One of its fathers was Antoine Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794). Lavoisier had an excellent education at the College Mazarin where he studied mathematics, astronomy, chemistry, and botany under eminent lecturers. In 1768 he was nominated adjoint chimiste to the Académie des Sciences. Son of an avocat au parlement (advocat of a court of justice) he also beared public offices and during the French Revolution he was appointed ferme-general (farmers-general) and later a régisseur des poudres (weight registrar) of the Republic. However, in 1794 he was personally accused by Marat and was executed at the Place de la Révulotion with many ex-farmers-gcncrals in May. Lavoisier was, nevertheless, most famous about his scientific achievements in doing away with the phlogiston theory. He impressively interpreted quantitative results which were based on his conviction that no ponderable matter disappears in any chemical change, consequently there was no ground to suppose that anything would evolve in burning. He also considered scales to provide chemistry with an irrefutable mathematical basis. You can see a commemorative medal, made in Paris 1821, in memory of him (No.6). In front of the diagram (No.4), illustrating the apparatus used by Joseph Priestly (1733-1804), the discoverer of oxygen, in his experiments in the production of fixed air (carbon dioxide), a sodawater-siphon is exhibited, which operates on the same principles. The system of Carl von Linne (Linnaeus) (1707-1778), the great Swedish botanist, that divided nature in three theoretical parts, articulated the principles for defining genera and species and to adhere the uniform use of specific names. His introduction of bi-nominal nomenclature was also applied to medicine for designating diseases. Jean-Baptist de Lamarck (1744-1829), was the first to create a modern theory on the history of development of the living world. We have presented the following contemporary books in the show-case: The Genera Plantarum by Linne, published in 1764; The Elementų Chemiae by Boerhaave, published in 1733; and Lavoisier's Opuscules Physiques et Chimiques, published in 1810. The Magyar Füvész Könyv (Hungarian Herbarium) is an application of Linne's system (1837).