HELMONT, JEAN BAPTIST VAN

   a celebrated German chemist, the father of chemistry, born at Brussels; his early years were divided between the study of medicine and the practice of a religious mysticism; the works of Paracelsus stimulated his interest in chemistry and physics, and having married a noble Brabant lady, he settled down on the family estate near Vilvorde, where he devoted himself to scientific research; mixed up a good deal of mysticism and alchemy with his scientific discoveries, and made a special study of gases; he was the first to prove the indestructibility of matter in chemical changes by utilising the balance in analysis; he invented the word gas, first used the melting-point of ice and the boiling-point of water as limits of a thermometric scale, and his physiological speculations led him to regard the stomach as the seat of the soul! (1577-1644).