SUMMARY

As the Introduction indicated, this is the point in the book where a historiographical switch occurs, with more attention being paid to the history of controversies and to the need to be aware of the themes of the ‘grand narrative’ of history. Nevertheless, the topics of the previous chapters, which were examined in terms of more continuous and ‘placid’ history, are also extremely important for understanding the focus of the next two chapters: the Helmontian enterprise to establish a revolution in therapeutics in England and its failure.

After leading the reader into the 1660s, the height of Helmontian influence, I discuss how the changes in natural philosophy were seen as affecting medicine, it being generally agreed that the former underpinned the latter. In their programme for reforming medicine Helmontians argued that, as the foundations of medicine had been destroyed, so the theories of disease and therapeutics that had been built upon them (especially the cure by contrary quality) should be pulled down and new ones erected on a surer base. The Helmontians also used less intellectual and more emotive and vituperative arguments, for instance, Galenic medicine's therapeutic failure, and its cruelty and lack of Christian charity. In particular, the evacuative procedures of bleeding, purging, etc., which were essential parts of Galenic therapeutics, were attacked as cruel, un-Christian and harmful. They should be replaced, argued the Helmontians, by their own powerful yet safe remedies.