Only comparatively recently have historians begun to recognize the importance and influence of Joan Baptista Van Helmont (1579 1644) in the history of medicine and chemistry. Van Helmont's theories on the nature of life, biological time, physiology and disease, the structure of matter, and the processes of chemical change are veiled in his writings by a brand of Renaissance mysticism. His organic conception of the natural world, together with his belief in alchemy and astral forces, has resulted in a predominantly unsympathetic attitude among historians of science, by whom he is generally...

Dieser Buchtitel ist Teil des Digitalisierungsprojekts Springer Book Archives mit Publikationen, die seit den Anfangen des Verlags von 1842 erschienen sind. Der Verlag stellt mit diesem Archiv Quellen fur die historische wie auch die disziplingeschichtliche Forschung zur Verfugung, die jeweils im historischen Kontext betrachtet werden mussen. Dieser Titel erschien in der Zeit vor 1945 und wird daher in seiner zeittypischen politisch-ideologischen Ausrichtung vom Verlag nicht beworben."

Originally published in 1938, this book contains the text of ten lectures arranged by the History of Science Committee at the University of Cambridge in 1936. Each speaker covered a different aspect of scientific endeavour, focussing mostly on advances made in the period between 1895 and 1935 in fields such as parasitology, radioactivity, astronomy and evolution theory. The lecturers include such scientific notables as Lord Rutherford, Professor George Nuttall and Sir William Dampier, chosen for the fact that they had 'made fundamental contributions to science' in the previous forty years....