by Valentin Chirosca
With the work of Leucippus and Democritus ancient Greek philosophy reaches its zenith when the initial question of Thales after the true nature of matter culminated 180 years later in the subtle concept of atoms, which bears an amazing resemblance to the twentieth century's view of chemistry. For this reason, Leucippus and Democritus have undoubtedly deserved the first price for the best guess in antiquity, as far as natural science is concerned. Unfortunately their contemporaries did not share their views with the same enthusiasm.
"The familiar medical roots ‘-iatry, -iatrics, iatro-,’ and their variants traditionally have traced their etymology to the Attic Greek word for physician, ‘iatros’. This paper traces the etymology of ‘iatros’ itself. Proceeding stepwise through time, the article demonstrates the evolution and borrowing of the word from its immediate Archaic Greek predecessor, the ‘iatār’, and further back to its earliest Greek form in the Linear B inscriptions. Beyond the Greek, it is then demonstrated how the Linear B was a direct borrowing from the non-Greek Linear A, an earlier language of the Ancient Mediterranean. From there, the article examines the likely cognate forms in the even earlier Hittite, Egyptian, and Akkadian languages to the East. Ultimately the origin of the ‘iatros’, of our English root ‘-iatry’, is traced to the earliest recorded language, Sumerian, and the Sumerian word for physician, the ‘IA.ZU’."
by Elliott B. Martin, MD
"Iatrochemistry (or chemiatry) is a branch of both chemistry and medicine. Having its roots in alchemy, iatrochemistry seeks to provide chemical solutions to diseasesand medical ailments.
This area of science has fallen out of use since the rise of modern medical practices. However, iatrochemistry was popular between 1525 and 1660, especially in Flanders. Its most notable leader was Paracelsus, an important Swiss alchemist of the 16th century. Iatrochemists believed that physical health was dependent on a specific balance of bodily fluids.
Alchemists used plant products and arsenic to treat diseases. The medical chemistry of the 16th and 17th centuries gained the name iatrochemistry, coming from the Greek word for physician."
The term is coined as Chymistry (1661) – the subject of the material principles of mixed bodies (Boyle) the "father of modern chemistry".[13] In his book, The Skeptical Chymist, Boyle attacked Paracelsus and the natural philosophy of Aristotle, which was taught at universities. However, Boyle's biographers, in their emphasis that he laid the foundations of modern chemistry, neglect how steadily he clung to the scholastic sciences and to alchemy, in theory, practice and doctrine.[14] The decline of alchemy continued in the 18th century with the birth of modern chemistry, which provided a more precise and reliable framework within a new view of the universe based on rational materialism.
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