Jan Baptist Van Helmont - Observations About Digestion

Observations About Digestion

Van Helmont wrote extensively on the subject of digestion. In Oriatrike or Physick Refined (1662, English translation of Ortus medicinae ...), van Helmont addressed earlier ideas on the subject, such as that food was digested due to the body's internal heat. If such was the case, van Helmont argued, how could cold-blooded animals live? His own opinion was that digestion was aided by a chemical reagent, or "ferment", within the body, such as inside the stomach. Harré suggests that in this way, van Helmont's idea was "very near to our modern concept of an enzyme." van Helmont proposed and described six different stages of digestion.