INTRODUCTION AND SUMMARY

The question to be asked is, ‘Why did the Helmontians fail?’ On the face of it, not to have to keep to the stringent diets of Galenic medicine would seem to have been a relief. Pleasant and mild medicines and the elimination of painful procedures should also have been especially attractive to medical consumers. Who would not have wanted to avoid the use of vesicatories ‘or Raisers of small and great Blisters, by irksome fretting, if not venomous Plaisters, sometimes flaying off as all the skin from the backs, otherwhiles the shoulders, leggs or wrists, the neck, head etc to extream torments, especially when those raw places are rub'd and irritated for diversion of venomous inflammations, hidious Curses and Excrations having been noted the impatient Effects of such cruelties’? Or what patient would welcome the prospect of the ‘tearing and rending’ of vomiting drugs, or the threat to modesty of clysters or enemas ‘by the odd position and Distastful handling of the body’? And yet, the Helmontians' enterprise of a new medicine did fail, and if we believe the comments of Helmontians themselves, this failure was due in large part to patient resistance to their particular brand of medicine.

In this chapter I first consider the Helmontian attack on Galenic regimen which helped to make Galenic medicine distinctive.