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Inventing Chemistry: Herman Boerhaave and the Reform of the Chemical Arts

Online ISBN:
9780226677620
Print ISBN:
9780226677606
Publisher:
University of Chicago Press
Book

Inventing Chemistry: Herman Boerhaave and the Reform of the Chemical Arts

Published online:
21 March 2013
Published in print:
2 April 2012
Online ISBN:
9780226677620
Print ISBN:
9780226677606
Publisher:
University of Chicago Press

Abstract

This book turns its attention to Herman Boerhaave (1668–1738), a Dutch medical and chemical professor whose work reached a wide, educated audience and became the template for chemical knowledge in the eighteenth century. Its primary focus is Boerhaave's educational philosophy, the development of which the author traces from Boerhaave's early days as a student in Leiden through his publication of the Elementa chemiae in 1732. He reveals how Boerhaave restructured and reinterpreted various practices from diverse chemical traditions—including craft chemistry, Paracelsian medical chemistry, and alchemy—shaping them into a chemical course that conformed to the pedagogical and philosophical norms of Leiden's medical faculty. In doing so, Boerhaave gave his chemistry a coherent organizational structure and philosophical foundation, thus transforming an artisanal practice into an academic discipline.

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