Brunschwig, Hieronymus

SUBJECT AREA: Medical technology

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b. c.1440 Strasbourg, Alsace

d. 1512/13 Strasbourg, Alsace

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German surgeon and chemist.

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Brunschwig was a widely read and highly respected surgeon of the city of Strasbourg. He was a writer of two works, one on surgery and the other, of greater importance, on chemical distillation. In this he was the inheritor of a tradition of the practice of distillation going back to the first centuries AD. The most familiar chemical tradition in the Middle Ages was that of alchemy, devoted to the attempt to make gold. The appearance of a number of printed books of a severely practical nature after 1500, however, testifies to the existence of a practical tradition that had flourished alongside alchemy. Brunsch-wig's first essay in this field was printed in 1500 and dealt with the preparation of "simples", or remedies with a single active constituent. In 1507 he brought out a work on the distilling of "composites", remedies with two or more active constituents. In these works Brunschwig sought to present a comprehensive account of the various kinds of apparatus available and the methods of preparing medicines, together with an account of the diseases it was hoped to cure with them. It was one of the earliest printed books on a chemical subject and the earliest to include illustrations of chemical apparatus. The works were widely used and did much to turn chemistry away from its preoccupation with gold-making, towards the making of substances useful in medicine.

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Further Reading

The best account of Brunschwig's life and work is the introduction to Book of Distillation by Hieronymus Bruunschwig, 1971, introd. Harold J.Abrahams, New York, Johnson Reprint (the best account of Brunschwig's life and work).

LRD