By Sietske Fransen, with Saskia Klerk
A few weeks ago Saskia Klerk introduced the Leiden manuscript BPL 3603
to the readers of this blog. This recently acquired manuscript has a
pencil-written remark on the flyleaf by a modern cataloguer with the
inscription ‘Van Helmond’s Recepten’. We can safely assume that this
refers to the seventeenth-century physician Jan Baptista van Helmont
(1579-1644) and/or his son Franciscus Mercurius (1614-1698). Father and Son van Helmont, frontispiece in Dageraed, Amsterdam 1659.
When Saskia told me about it for the first time, I was very curious
to learn more. As there is very little known about the reception of Jan
Baptista van Helmont’s Dutch work Dageraed (‘Daybreak’,
Amsterdam 1659), this recipe book in Dutch might well shed more light on
this part of the Helmontian story. And secondly, I had the faint hope
that Saskia might have found some of the now lost manuscripts by Van
Helmont himself. [1] Unfortunately the latter is not the case, but I am
very sure that the manuscript will tell us more about the reception of
Van Helmont’s Dageraed, as well as about medical practices in the Low Countries in general. University Library Leiden, MS BPL 3603, p. 103 (selection)
In two previous blog posts (see here and here)
I wrote about Van Helmont’s treatise on the plague and his recipes for
sweat potions. These recipes were good examples to show the differences
in translation practices between the ingredients (heavily based on Latin
terminology) and the performative parts of the recipes (firmly grounded
in the vernacular tradition). Not unsurprisingly – since these are the
only recipes in Van Helmont’s texts that were published as visually
recognisable recipes (with lists of ingredients, followed by the
actions) – these recipes are copied into BPL 3603. The picture here
shows how the compiler of the manuscript ordered the ingredients in such
a way that we find the Latin names in the left column and the Dutch
equivalences on the right.All terms and additions are taken verbatim from Van Helmont’sDageraed, which implies that the compiler had seen a copy of this book.At
this point it is unclear to us whether this Dutch recipe collector
was a physician, or an apothecary, or whether BPL 3606 was a household
book, or perhaps it was a combination of all of this. We hope to find
out more in the future.
The compiler did not only copy the recipe, but also several other
passages from the plague treatise. Van Helmont’s treatise on the plague
forms the second part of the Dageraed. The first part of the
book gives an overview of his medical philosophy, from the influence of
the heavenly bodies to his theory of disease, whereas the second part
concentrates on one disease (the plague) and its history, causes, and
treatments. The compiler of BPL 3603 seems especially interested in
copying passages in which Van Helmont displays his experience. The
compiler quotes Van Helmont, for example, as a proof for his
understanding that only sulphur (‘swavel’) can protect one from the
plague. Van Helmont tells of the example of a regiment of soldiers which
he observed nearby Sas van Gent. The
regiment consisting of Neapolitans, as well as Walloons and Germans
died almost entirely from the plague, apart from the Germans. According
to van Helmont, the Germans had used gun powder (‘bospoeder’) on their
clothes to protect themselves from lice. Subsequently, very few of them
died, which Van Helmont saw as a result of the qualities of sulphur. University Library Leiden, MS BPL 3603, p. 104: the author quotes Van Helmont.
The compiler uses the extracts from the Dageraed here to
prove the effectiveness of sulphur as a treatment. This resonates with
extracts and quotes of Van Helmont that the compiler adds two pages
later. Also here the main concern seems proof for the usefulness and
effectiveness of the discussed drugs: ‘Van Helmont says he has seen it
been used effectively’, ‘Van Helmont says that no one will die from
using these drugs’, etc. Van Helmont’s comments and the way the
compiler is quoting and naming Van Helmont make clear that Van
Helmont is used as an authority. The compiler seems to be very
interested in the practical applications of the drugs, much in contrast
to Van Helmont, who always embeds his practices into a theoretical
framework. This might point to the motifs of collecting for the
compiler.
In the next blog post Saskia will start to look into the references
to Johan van Beverwijck in the BPL 3603. Will she find a similar
interest in proof and personal experience by the compiler when quoting
Van Beverwijck or does his interest lie somewhere else?
[1] For a brief account on the lost Helmontian manuscripts, see
Antonio Clericuzio, ‘From van Helmont to Boyle. A Study of the
Transmission of Helmontian Chemical and Medical Theories in
Seventeenth-Century England’, The British Journal for the History of Science 26, p. 311-12.
