In chemistry, Jean Beguin (1550-1620), Ioannes Beguinus or Johannis Beguini, was a French iatrochemist noted for his 1610 Tyrocinium Chymicum—variously translated as Beginner's Chemistry, Apprenticeship in Chemistry, or First Voyage in Chemistry, respectively, a type of laboratory manual for his students—which contains the first prototype of the chemical equation (see: history of the chemical equation)—which is often characterized as the first true chemistry textbook. [1]
In about 1604, Beguin began to give lectures on chemistry to the general public. In the 1615 Paris edition of his Beginner’s Chemistry (Tyrocinium Chymicum), he famously details the reaction of corrosive sublimate (HgCl2) with sulfide of antimony (Sb2S3), as shown below: [1]
English chemistry historian Henry Leicester defines this as “an almost modern equation.” [4] Other chemistry historians: Maurice Crosland (1959), Alistair Duncan (1971), likewise, corroborate on this distinction.
Influence
Beguin’s Beginner’s Chemistry was very influential, in its time, appearing in an extraordinary number of Latin, French and English editions, going through some forty-one editions between 1610 and 1690. [3] Beguin's book was the second book on the required reading list for the chemistry lectures of Dutch physician and chemist Herman Boerhaave, the leader of influential "Leyden school" of physical chemist (see: schools of thermodynamics), which included: Andrew Plummer, William Cullen, Joseph Black, and John Roebuck, and—through association with Black—James Watt—which can all products or precipitates, so to speak, of the Leyden school centered around Boerhaave.[2] Beguin’s chemistry book was also frequently cited by English physicist-chemist Robert Boyle. [3]
References
1. (a) Duncan, Alistair M. (1970). “Introduction to the 1970 Edition”; in A Dissertation on Elective Attractions (pgs. vii-xxxviii) by Torbern Bergman. Frank Cass & Co.
(b) Beguin, Jean. (1615). Beginner’s Chemistry (Tyrocinium Chymicum) (pgs. 167-68). Paris.
(c) Patterson, Thomas S. (1937). “Jean Beguin and his Tyrocinium Chymicum” (abs), Annals of Science, 2:243-98.
(d) Debus, Allen G. (2001). Chemistry and Medical Debate: Van Helmont and Boerhaave (pg. 24). Science History.
2. Moran, Bruce T. (2006). Distilling Knowledge: Alchemy, Chemistry, and the Scientific Revolution (pg. 112). Harvard University Press.
3. Hall, Marie Boas. (1958). Robert Boyle and Seventeenth Century Chemistry (pg. 51). CUP Archive.
4. Leicester, Henry M. (1971). The Historical Background of Chemistry (pg. 102). Dover.
Further reading
● Applebaum, Wilbur. (2000). Encyclopedia of the Scientific Revolution: from Copernicus to Newton (§: Jean Beguin, pgs. 125-26). Psychology Press.
External links
● Jean Beguin – Wikipedia.
● Beguin, Jean (1500-1620) – Eric Weisstein’s World of Scientific Biography.
