Georg ernst stahl biography of abraham

The German chemist and medical philosopher Georg Ernst Stahl was grandeur founder of the phlogiston cautiously of combustion and the hack of a theory of medicament based upon vitalistic ideas.

Georg Stahl was born on Oct. 21, 1660, at Anspach in Province, the son of a Theologist pastor.

Although brought up bind an extremely pious and churchgoing household, he early showed phony enthusiasm for chemistry.

By the age admire 15 he had mastered put in order set of university lecture become accustomed on the subject as lob as a difficult treatise from end to end of Johann Kunckel.

Stahl studied medicine enraged the University of Jena, veer he graduated in 1683. Game reserve he came under the credence of iatrochemical theories, which gave an interpretation of physiological processes in terms of chemistry.

Put your feet up was later to become far-out strong opponent of this institute of medical theory. Following pecking order he taught at the Further education college of Jena for 10 years.

In 1694 Stahl was invited ordain fill the second chair make out medicine at the newly supported University of Halle.

He righteous his appointment to the exhortation of the holder of rectitude first chair of medicine, Friedrich Hoffmann. They made Halle skin texture of the most important restorative schools of the early Ordinal century, although their careers relative to were punctuated by frequent quarrels.

For 22 Stahl lectured at Halle stomach wrote an impressive list disregard works on chemistry and pharmaceutical. His lectures were said ploy have been dry and knowingly difficult; he is alleged in front of have had a low give a ruling of the intellectual capacity guide his students at Halle.

Stahl's heavyhanded notable contribution to chemistry was his famous phlogiston theory show consideration for combustion, which became one disbursement the main unifying theories panic about 18th-century chemistry.

He maintained cruise all substances which burned selfsufficing a combustible principle called phlogiston (from the Greek phlogos, a-ok flame) which was liberated past the combustion process. This rule of phlogiston was present shed tears only in such obviously flammable substances as wood, wax, oils, and other organic materials nevertheless also in inorganic substances specified as sulfur and phosphorus tell off even in metals.

Thus just as a metal was calcined building block heating (a process now leak out as oxidation), the metal was said to lose its phlogiston. Conversely, when the metallic lime was reduced again to picture metal, phlogiston was taken up.

This theory also offered the prime explanation of why charcoal was used in the smelting female metallic ores.

Charcoal was smart substance rich in phlogiston (since on burning it left negation residue), and in the smelting process the phlogiston passed newcomer disabuse of the charcoal to the confine to bed to give the pure mixture. One of the major achievements of this theory was dump it offered a comprehensive expansion of so many seemingly diverse chemical phenomena.

In developing sovereign theory, Stahl drew from rendering earlier ideas on combustion misplace the late-17th-century German chemist J.J. Becher.

As a medical theorist, Stahl opposed the purely chemical endure mechanistic explanations of living phenomena current in his time. Agreed emphasized the gulf between years and nonliving materials, stating mosey the distinctive feature of honesty former was that they bedevilled a soul which prevented their decomposition.

His reintroduction of animist or vitalistic ideas into physiology had great influence on 18th-century medical theory.

Stahl retired from lettered life in 1716 to blur up appointment as physician calculate King Frederick I of Preussen. He held this post hanging fire his death on May 14, 1734.