The Advent Of Iatrochemistry
THE ADVENT OF IATROCHEMISTRY
The importance of the feud between alchemy and iatrochemistry in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries cannot be overemphasized. It marked undoubtedly the beginning of a new era for both chemistry and medicine by uniting them together. It was part of the general trend, away from dependence on Aristotle and Galen that was sweeping Western Europe with the advent of the Renaissance. Vesalius was tactfully questioning the authority of Galen in matters of anatomy; Paracelsus was thundering against the whole scholastic tradition in medicine; and even a man of the Church, Copernicus, was demolishing the ancient Ptolemaic beliefs within astronomy. This intellectual revolution …show more content…
The great plagues of the Middle Ages had shown the Europeans the pressing need for new findings in the field of applied medicine; and the advent of the commercial revolution, which began with the transoceanic travels in search of spices and pharmaceutical plants, provided the golden opportunity in that age of adventure. With intellectual changes going all around, there had to take place a change in applied chemistry as well. Drugs and their components had for a long time been associated with medicine and chemistry; so it is no wander that the new revolution in the healing arts had to take place in the combined field of medical chemistry.15 The Iatrochemists of the Renaissance provided the starting point of this new evolution of thoughts about …show more content…
Since the chemical and medical knowledge at that time was far from being self-sustaining, there arose a mutual need for both medicine and chemistry to strive for newer solutions conjointly. The chemist was to discover the medicines, prepare them after investigating them chemically, and guarantee their purity (the beginning of the manufacturing organic chemist); while the physician was to examine their efficacy by using them therapeutically on patients, or on experimental animals (the beginning of pharmacology) or better yet both roles were to be eventually united in the person of the medical chemist (the early beginnings of the concept of companies like Celgene, Gilead, Alcon, Merck…) That was what happened after centuries of progress along those lines. No one at that time could have possibly foreseen that this collaboration between medicine, pharmacy and chemistry would eventually result in the wonder
The importance of the feud between alchemy and iatrochemistry in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries cannot be overemphasized. It marked undoubtedly the beginning of a new era for both chemistry and medicine by uniting them together. It was part of the general trend, away from dependence on Aristotle and Galen that was sweeping Western Europe with the advent of the Renaissance. Vesalius was tactfully questioning the authority of Galen in matters of anatomy; Paracelsus was thundering against the whole scholastic tradition in medicine; and even a man of the Church, Copernicus, was demolishing the ancient Ptolemaic beliefs within astronomy. This intellectual revolution …show more content…
The great plagues of the Middle Ages had shown the Europeans the pressing need for new findings in the field of applied medicine; and the advent of the commercial revolution, which began with the transoceanic travels in search of spices and pharmaceutical plants, provided the golden opportunity in that age of adventure. With intellectual changes going all around, there had to take place a change in applied chemistry as well. Drugs and their components had for a long time been associated with medicine and chemistry; so it is no wander that the new revolution in the healing arts had to take place in the combined field of medical chemistry.15 The Iatrochemists of the Renaissance provided the starting point of this new evolution of thoughts about …show more content…
Since the chemical and medical knowledge at that time was far from being self-sustaining, there arose a mutual need for both medicine and chemistry to strive for newer solutions conjointly. The chemist was to discover the medicines, prepare them after investigating them chemically, and guarantee their purity (the beginning of the manufacturing organic chemist); while the physician was to examine their efficacy by using them therapeutically on patients, or on experimental animals (the beginning of pharmacology) or better yet both roles were to be eventually united in the person of the medical chemist (the early beginnings of the concept of companies like Celgene, Gilead, Alcon, Merck…) That was what happened after centuries of progress along those lines. No one at that time could have possibly foreseen that this collaboration between medicine, pharmacy and chemistry would eventually result in the wonder