Klein, Joel A. (Author)
This project explores the intellectual, cultural, and practical interactions among chymistry, medicine, and atomism in the early-modern German university and laboratory by focusing on chymical medicine in the works and letters of the Wittenberg professor of medicine Daniel Sennert. Sennert was an early atomist who had a major influence on Robert Boyle, was among the first to offer university chymical pedagogy, and was one of the most widely read authors on medicine and natural philosophy in the early seventeenth century, but much of his chymico-medical oeuvre remains neglected. Sennert envisioned a major reform of Galenist pathology and pharmacy founded upon experience, atomism, a redefinition of chymistry, and a new understanding of the material principles of nature. This reform was associated with a serious interest in chymical medicines, among which were nearly-universal noble metallic remedies as well as cathartic medicines thought to purge the body in multiple ways. That Sennert's reform of medicine was perceived as radical is apparent from the several controversies to which it led, including an extended dispute with Groningen professor Johann Freitag, in which Sennert was accused of blasphemy and heresy. Several of Sennert's chymical and chymico-medical experiments shed new light on this controversy and develop notions of experience and credulity in early-modern natural philosophy. Sennert pursued chymical medicines and carried out numerous experimental trials both via a collaborative epistolary exchange with his brother-in-law, Michael Döring, and with students in his "chymical college." The conceptualization of these remedies within rational medicine was a major part of his effort to locate a via media between iconoclastic Paracelsian chymists and traditionalist Galenists and Aristotelians. Likewise, Sennert drew from Lutheranism and literary humanism to style himself an incredulous observer of nature, but also to develop a conception of the public good in opposition to secretive empirics and charlatans during the unrest of the Thirty Years' War. By historicizing the generation and transmission of chymico-medical knowledge and experience in the early Republic of Letters, this project suggests that Sennert was not simply a reformer who developed concepts integral to later chymistry, but anticipated important values and ideals of later scientific discourse.
...MoreDescription Cited in Dissertation Abstracts International-A 75/11(E), May 2015. Proquest Document ID: 1560892481.
Article
Hiro Hirai;
(2021)
Daniel Sennert, Chymistry, and Theological Debates
(/isis/citation/CBB126568830/)
Article
Klein, Joel A.;
(2015)
Daniel Sennert, The Philosophical Hen, and The Epistolary Quest for a (Nearly-) Universal Medicine
(/isis/citation/CBB001202176/)
Article
Giancarlo Zanier;
(2004)
La presenza di Patrizi nella filosofia naturale di Daniel Sennert
(/isis/citation/CBB013691400/)
Article
Lüthy, Christoph Herbert;
(2005)
Daniel Sennert's Slow Conversion from Hylemorphism to Atomism
(/isis/citation/CBB001024435/)
Article
Klein, Joel A.;
(2014)
Corporeal Elements and Principles in the Learned German Chymical Tradition
(/isis/citation/CBB001421638/)
Book
Hirai, Hiro;
(2011)
Medical Humanism and Natural Philosophy: Renaissance Debates on Matter, Life, and the Soul
(/isis/citation/CBB001250502/)
Article
Newman, William R.;
(2009)
The Significance of “Chymical Atomism”
(/isis/citation/CBB000932579/)
Article
Hirai, Hiro;
(2007)
Atomes vivants, origine de l'âme et génération spontanée chez Daniel Sennert
(/isis/citation/CBB001031731/)
Chapter
Michael, Emily;
(2001)
Sennert's Sea Change: Atoms and Causes
(/isis/citation/CBB000401075/)
Article
Antonio Clericuzio;
(2018)
Gassendi and the English Mechanical Philosophers
(/isis/citation/CBB990799390/)
Book
Luthy, Christoph;
Murdoch, John E.;
Newman, William R.;
(2001)
Late Medieval and Early Modern Corpuscular Matter Theories
(/isis/citation/CBB000100046/)
Article
Gregorio Baldin;
(2018)
Points, Atoms and Rays of Light: History of a Controversy from Mersenne to Hobbes
(/isis/citation/CBB119606416/)
Article
Blank, Andreas;
(2011)
Daniel Sennert on Poisons, Epilepsy, and Subordinate Forms
(/isis/citation/CBB001034591/)
Article
Mordechai Feingold;
(2016)
“Experimental Philosophy”: Invention and Rebirth of a Seventeenth-Century Concept
(/isis/citation/CBB091437409/)
Chapter
Blank, Andreas;
(2011)
Sennert and Leibniz on Animate Atoms
(/isis/citation/CBB001500215/)
Chapter
Hirai, Hiro;
(2012)
Living Atoms, Hylomorphism and Spontaneous Generation in Daniel Sennert
(/isis/citation/CBB001213677/)
Book
Avramov, Iordan;
Hunter, Michael;
Yoshimoto, Hideyuki;
(2010)
Boyle's Books: The Evidence of His Citations
(/isis/citation/CBB001200537/)
Article
Crignon, Claire;
(2013)
The Debate about methodus medendi during the Second Half of the Seventeenth Century in England: Modern Philosophical Readings of Classical Medical Empiricism in Bacon, Nedham, Willis and Boyle
(/isis/citation/CBB001213580/)
Article
Lyke de Vries;
(2022)
Protecting Academia and Religion: Andreas Libavius’s Criticism of a General Reformation
(/isis/citation/CBB629444913/)
Chapter
Arthur, Richard T. W.;
(2006)
Animal Generation and Substance in Sennert and Leibniz
(/isis/citation/CBB000771976/)
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