Antall József szerk.: Pictures from the Past of the Healing Arts / Orvostörténeti Közlemények – Supplementum 5. (Budapest, 1972)

Pictures from the Past of the Healing Arts (Guide for the Exhibition)

IV. MEDICINE IN THE AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT Like any great trend of thought, Enlightenment cannot be fixed to exact dates. Especially not when its essence is examined within the narrow scope of a special branch of science - in this case medicine. The slow spread of new ideas in time and space, the reconciliation of the opposition they create, involve long, polarized or parallel processes. From the view-point of medical history, the 17th century cannot be separated from the beginning of the 18th century. The great explorers realize it again that they have to work "for the sake of mankind". Research should be made not for its own sake but in order to enlighten people and to banish the misbeliefs in supernatural forces. Depending on empiricism they acknowledged as true only that had been justified by experience and common sense. This is why their scientific work was based on observation and experimentation. The different branches of science built on the wide base of the revolution in the natural sciences secured a wide horizon for the theory of medicine and subsequently for medical practice. J. The Development of the Natural Sciences From the view-point of the history of medicine and pharmacy the development of chemistry should be treated first. Chemistry, in the modern sense of the world, was born out of the chemical knowledge of the ancients lost in the mists of time. Then the period of alchemy, the "secret science" followed, spreading triumphantly from China according to some scholars, or Egypt as others believe it - and lasted until the 17th century. Medical chemistry, i. e. iatrochemistry born in the Renaissance and developing parallel with alchemy came more and more into prominence. From the middle of the 17th century until the last quarter of the 18th century the so-called "phlogiston" theory (fire-substance) predominated. This theory has long been discarded, nevertheless, the foundation of modern chemistry based on the investigation of natural phenomena may be said to have been laid by its representatives. Due to the creative forces of the great political revolutions transforming social systems in the end of the 18th century, a real revolution took place in chemistry, too. Its father was Lavoisier (1743-1794) who was later executed by the revolution itself. He considered balance as the basic instrument needed in research-work, thus providing chemistry with an unshakable mathematical basis. In front of the diagram illustrating the apparatus used by Joseph Priestley (1733-1804), the discoverer of oxygen, in his experiments in the production of fixed air (carbon dioxide) a sodawater-siphon is exhibited which works on the same principles.