Wilhelm Homberg and the Search for the Constituents of Plants at the 17th-Century Acadēmie Royale Des Sciences

Abstract

THE role of chemistry perplexed late seventeenth-century scientists. Robert Boyle reported that his friends were dismayed when he turned from purely philosophical inquiries to research in a chemical laboratory. They accused him of abandoning gentlemanly science and stooping to the level of sooty empirics.1 Seventeenth-century chemical textbooks supported the stereotype of the chemist as a craftsman who worked in a hot and dirty laboratory primarily to produce useful ingredients, especially medicaments. 2 Boyle retorted that he was trying to find a common ground for chemistry and natural philosophy, and that he would dignify the craft by uniting its practical aims to theoretical ones.3 Soon after its establishment in 1666, the Parisian Academie Royale des Sciences joined Boyle in this endeavour. One of the Academy's longest standing research projects during the seventeenth century was the chemical analysis of plants. Academicians hoped that by distilling plants they could find experimental evidence for corpuscularianism,4 discover the nature of plants,5 ascertain medical uses of the distillants of plants,6 or distinguish chemically among the parts and types of plants.7 But their dominant goal was to identify the chemical constituents of plants.8 Within a decade, therefore, after Boyle explained his aim, the Parisian Academy also tried to establish for chemistry an honoured place within natural philosophy. The Academy's chemical analyses of plants are usually interpreted differently, for seventeenth-century perplexity about the role of chemistry has affected the history of chemistry. It is commonly said that the Academy's distillations of plants were a fruitless waste of time and energy.9 Proponents of this view argue that it was Wilhelm Homberg, admitted to the Academy in 1691, who inaugurated a refreshing, new direction in chemical research,1o and that Homberg did so because he brought with him insights gained during his apprenticeship with Boyle.11 According to this interpretation of the Academy's chemical research, Boyle's theoretical aims were not adopted in France for 30 years, and academicians before Homberg collected chemical data mainly for practical, medical purposes. 12 This view misrepresents both chemical research at the Academy before Homberg's admission and the nature of Homberg's o\vn career and early contributions to the Academy. Before re-evaluating Homberg's role in the Academy, a brief summary of the institution's chemical and botanical research before 1691 is necessary. One of the Academy's earliest and major projects was to publish a natural history of plants. Proposed by Claude Perrault in 1667, this was to contain the traditional illustrations and descriptions of plants

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