Medicine as a calling -- Didactic chemistry in Leiden -- The institutes of chemistry -- Chemistry in the medical faculty -- Instruments and the experimental method -- Philosophical chemistry -- From alchemy to chemistry -- Boerhaave's legacy
Summary
In Inventing Chemistry, historian John C. Powers turns his attention to Herman Boerhaave (1668 & ndash;1738), a Dutch medical and chemical professor whose work reached a wide, educated audience and became the template for chemical knowledge in the eighteenth century. The primary focus of this study is Boerhaave & rsquo;s educational philosophy, and Powers traces its development from Boerhaave & rsquo;s early days as a student in Leiden through his publication of the Elementa chemiae in 1732. Powers reveals how Boerhaave restructured and reinterpreted various practices from diverse chemical traditio
