The connection of chemistry and medicine : address at the opening of the medical classes, Tuesday, October 21st, 1890 / by John Ferguson, M.A., LL.D., F.S.A., Regius Professor of Chemistry in the University of Glasgow.

  • Ferguson, John, 1838-1916.
Date:
1895
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: The connection of chemistry and medicine : address at the opening of the medical classes, Tuesday, October 21st, 1890 / by John Ferguson, M.A., LL.D., F.S.A., Regius Professor of Chemistry in the University of Glasgow. Source: Wellcome Collection.

Provider: This material has been provided by The University of Glasgow Library. The original may be consulted at The University of Glasgow Library.

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    concoctions, used for the vaguest reasons, were made mostly by distillation and extraction. His materials were derived almost solely from plants. He avoided metals and minerals, and their compounds. It was not till the beginning of the sixteenth cen- tury that there arose the man who was to alter this and ultimately to concentrate the scattered chemical knowledge of the time. It was Theophrastus von Hohenheim who pointed out that one of the pillars of medicine was alchemy, but that alchemy was not merely the perfecting of the inferior metals, as they were considered, into gold, but that it included also the chemical preparation of all materials for man’s use, including medicines for his ailments. He went further too, for he discarded the vast potions then employed, introduced active drugs in small doses, and advocated the employ- ment of mineral and saline medicines. But as the preparation of these were possible only by a study of their properties, the physician became of necessity a chemist. All this, however, was not effected without fierce controversy. Paracelsus from the day he lived down to the present time has been considered the embodiment of a charlatan. The enormous stimulus he gave to medicine in the sixteenth century is ignored. The fact that the doctrines of himself and of his followers ultimately prevailed in spite of all the opposition of the dis-