Treatment using chalybs, according to Johannes Hartmann and Eberhard Gockel: A remedy against diseases of the liver and the spleen in 17th century Germany

This short and prospective article deals with Johannes Hartmann (1568-1631), who is reputed as having been the first professor of chemistry at the University of Marburg. ‘For Hartmann’, Bruce T. Moran has written, ‘the road to the laboratory of chemical medicine in Marburg began in Kassel, at the court of the university’s protector, the Landgrave Moritz of Hesse (1572-1632)’. Having studied at Wittenberg, Hartmann was appointed as a mathematician in Kassel and was chosen to fill the chair of mathematics when the incumbent died. He received a medical degree in 1606 and ‘began a brief correspondence with the French Paracelsian, Joseph Duchesne (Quercetanus) (c. 1544-1609), who had visited Kassel in 1604’. Moritz had become captivated by the study of occult philosophy, especially in relation to alchemy, and was well on his way to amassing an extensive collection of alchemical, Cabbalistic, and Paracelsian manuscripts, and to fashioning a court circle of alchemical and medical adepts. Thus, ‘in 1608, he enthusiastically received a suggestion from Hartmann for founding a collegium chymicum at Marburg’ and he ‘chose to invest Hartmann with a new university role and a new title – Professor publicus chymiatriae’.