By Je Wilson
In the frontispiece to his father’s book, The Origin of Medicine, published in 1648, there is an engraving of a young Francis van Helmont. Tucked into a bizarre overlapping portrait, he peeks out at the reader from behind his famous father’s head–his right eye entirely obscured by the elder Van Helmont’s left ear.
Francis’ father was Jan Baptist van Helmont, the Flemish chemist, doctor, and alchemist who is credited with founding the study of gases, and who claimed to be the first to use the word “gas” scientifically. After an early clash with the Inquisition, which did not like some of his nuttier medical ideas, Jan opted to play it safe and asked his son Francis to publish the bulk of his writing after his death. Dutifully complying, Francis squeezes into the picture. Orbited by the heraldic shields of his ancestors, he cozies up to his father as if ready to take on this intellectual bequest: he will be the Van Helmont, his father’s true heir, for the rest of the seventeenth century.
In some sense, this was accurate. Born in Brussels in 1614 and dying at the end of the century in 1699, Francis left his mark on the
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