Daniel Sennert and the Chemical Causes of Disease

Time: 12:00pm

Location: Chemical Heritage Foundation

The Wittenberg professor and physician Daniel Sennert (1572-1637) wrote some of the most widely read texts in medicine, natural philosophy, and chemistry in the first half of the seventeenth century, and his corpuscularian atomism had an important influence in the history of the Scientific Revolution. In this paper I explore Sennert's understanding of disease aetiology, and in particular, the role of tartar as a chemico-atomical cause of disease. I trace the role of tartar within Sennert's work from a 1608 disputation, wherein he first discussed chemistry, through the 1636 Hypomnemata Physica, a text containing his fully mature atomic philosophy. Sennert applied his understanding of chemistry to so-called tartarous diseases such as gout, arthritis, and kidney stones, reasoning from chemical experiments to chemical cures. This study thus presents an example of the interplay between experimental atomic chemistry, natural philosophy, and academic medicine in the seventeenth century.

Joel Klein is a Ph.D candidate in the Indiana University Department of History and Philosophy of Science. He has spent the last two years carrying out archival research in Germany via a Fulbright Grant and a DAAD Research Grant. His research interests include the interaction between medicine and chemistry in the seventeenth century, chemical experimentation, and the recreation of early-modern chemical experiments.