The Gold-Maker of Animal Oil and Prussian Blue Fame - The Chemical and Medicinal Science Philosophy of Johann Conrad Dippel.

Abstract

Johann Conrad Dippel (1673-1734) was a theologian, a physician, and a (probably autodidactic) chemist. He had no viable scientific theory, dismissed atomism and relentlessly attacked the rational philosophies of Descartes, Spinoza, Hobbes, Leibniz, and Wolff as a radical Pietist, for whom body and mind constitute an inseparable whole. By implication he rejected Newton, but accepted Aristotle partially. He vehemently rejected Descartes' animal (man)-machine and therefore also Boerhaave's nervous machine. His claim of gold-making was the probable reason for his call to Berlin, where he prepared not gold but his animal pyrolysis oil (Dippel's oil) by pyrolysis of blood, leading to the co-discovery of Prussian blue. Later he made impossible promises of gold-making to Denmark's King Frederik IV. His wonder-balm was claimed to heal all wounds, including that caused by a nail hammered into a dog's skull. His phytomedicines were derived from Galen and Dioscorides; his chemical medicines from Paracelsus and Valentine. He denied the possibility of establishing general rules for medicine and did not express an opinion on the leading chemical theory, the phlogiston. In the absence of any plausible chemical and medicinal theories, Dippel relied on the almighty God, to guide him to produce gold and a medicinal arcanum.