Assignment 3

The advancements of chemistry, in the practical sense, did not seem to occur until the fourteenth and fifteen centuries. Paracelsus popularized the subject of iatrochemistry, the utilization of chemicals for healing human illnesses (88-89). It would be, however, that John of Rupescissa would be considered the founder of medical chemistry given his acquaintance with alchemy and his description of its methods (89). Rupescissa viewed alcohol as the main substance that makes up wine ,and he developed the theory that alcohol could be extracted from all things, utilizing antimony through extracting the suflide variation with vinegar (89). By the sixteenth century chemical methods could be described in full detail despite the fact that it wasn’t a foundation on its own. These sixteenth century scientists paved the way for the first chemists to arise in the seventeenth century. A scientist by the name of Hieronymus Brunschwygk published an important book that laid the foundation of understanding distillation. His work the Great Book of Distillation, is an enlarged edition of his work (93). Mineralogical and metallurgical chemistry emerged from the miner’s who were willing to share and explain the methods they utilized in order to benefit younger workers. The books centered around around quantitative determinations and helped spread influence to other fields of chemistry (94). These handbooks proved that chemistry was involved in many interests, not just the study of alchemists. A man named Paracelsus laid the foundation of modifying the older theories of medicine. His work to find remedies for illnesses hastened the discovery of new chemical substances as well (97).