View source for Georg Ernst Stahl

{{Short description|German physician (1659–1734)}}
{{about|Georg Stahl, the German chemist and physician|Georg Stahl, the German artist|Georg August Stahl}}
{{Infobox scientist
| name              = Georg Ernst Stahl
| image             = Georg Ernst Stahl crop.jpg
| birth_date        = {{birth date|1659|10|22|df=y}}
| birth_place       = [[Ansbach]], Holy Roman Empire
| death_date        = {{death date and age|1734|5|24|1659|10|22|df=y}}
| death_place       = [[Berlin]], [[Kingdom of Prussia]]
| residence         = 
| citizenship       = 
| field             = [[Chemistry]]
| work_institutions = [[University of Halle]]
| alma_mater        = [[University of Jena]]
| doctoral_advisor  = 
| doctoral_students = [[Nathanael Sendel]],
[[Johann Heinrich Pott]] <ref>Hufbauer, Karl (1982). [https://archive.org/stream/bub_gb_hUHvy2HeBYoC/bub_gb_hUHvy2HeBYoC_djvu.txt The Formation of the German Chemical Community], 1720-1795. University of California Press. pp. 176–177.</ref>
| known_for         = [[Phlogiston theory]]<br />[[Fermentation (biochemistry)|Fermentation]]
| author_abbrev_bot = 
| author_abbrev_zoo = 
| prizes            = 
| footnotes         = 
| signature         = 
}}
'''Georg Ernst Stahl''' (22 October 1659<ref name=":1">Stahl's date of birth is often given erroneously as 1660. The correct date is recorded in the parish register of St. John's church, Ansbach. See {{cite journal |first=B.J. |last=Gottlieb |title=Vitalistisches Denken in Deutschland im Anschluss an Georg Ernst Stahl |journal=Klinische Wochenschrift |volume=21 |issue=20 |year=1942 |pages=445–448 |doi=10.1007/bf01773817|s2cid=41987182 }}</ref> – 24 May 1734) was a German [[chemist]], [[physician]] and [[philosopher]]. He was a supporter of [[vitalism]], and until the late 18th century his works on [[phlogiston]] were accepted as an explanation for chemical processes.<ref name= "source 2">Ku-ming Chang (2008)"Stahl, Georg Ernst", ''Complete Dictionary of Scientific Biography'', Vol. 24, from [[Cengage Learning]]</ref>

Raised as a son to a [[Lutheran]] pastor, he was brought up in a very pious and religious household.<ref name=":0">{{Cite journal|date=1954|title=Adreßbuch Deutscher Chemiker 1953/54. Gemeinsam herausgegeben von Gesellschaft Deutscher Chemiker und Verlag Chemie, Weinheim/Bergstraße. Verlag Chemie GmbH. (1953). 450 S.|journal=Starch - Stärke|volume=6|issue=12|pages=312|doi=10.1002/star.19540061211|issn=0038-9056}}</ref> From an early age he expressed profound interest in chemistry, by age 15 mastering a set of university lecture notes on chemistry and eventually a difficult treatise by [[Johann von Löwenstern-Kunckel|Johann Kunckel.]]  He had two wives, who both died from [[puerperal fever]] in 1696 and 1706. He also had a son Johnathan and a daughter who died in 1708.<ref name="source 2" /> He continued to work and publish following the death of both of his wives and eventually his children, but was often very cold to students and fell into deep depression<ref name=":0" /> until his death in 1734 at the age of 74.<ref name=":0" />

==Life and education==
He was born in St. John's parish in [[Ansbach]], Brandenburg, on October 22, 1659.<ref name=":1" /> His father was Johann Lorentz Stahl (1620–1698).<ref name= "source 1">"Georg Ernst Stahl". ''Encyclopædia Britannica'', Encyclopædia Britannica Online. Encyclopædia Britannica Inc., 2013. Web. 25 May 2013</ref> He was raised in [[Pietism]], which influenced his viewpoints on the world. His interests in [[chemistry]] were due to the influence a professor of medicine, Jacob Barner, and a chemist, Johann Kunckel von Löwenstjern.<ref name="source 3"/> In the late 1670s, Stahl moved to [[Saxe-Jena]] to study medicine at the [[University of Jena]]. Stahl's success at Jena earned him a M.D. around 1683 and then he went on to teach at the same university.

Teaching at the university gained him such a good reputation that in 1687 he was hired as the personal physician to Duke Johann Ernst of Sachsen-Weimar. In 1693, he joined his old college friend [[Friedrich Hoffmann]] at the [[University of Halle]].<ref name= "source 3">Magill, Frank N. "Georg Ernst Stahl", ''Dictionary of World Biography''. 1st ed. 1999. Print.</ref> In 1694, he held the chair of medicine at the University of Halle. From 1715 until his death, he was the physician and counselor to King [[Friedrich Wilhelm I of Prussia]] and in charge of Berlin's Medical Board.<ref name= "source 1"/>

==Medicine==
Stahl's focus was on the distinction between the living and nonliving. Although he did not support the views of iatro-mechanists, he believed that all non-living creatures are mechanical and so are living things to a certain degree.<ref name="source 1"/> His views were that nonliving things are stable throughout time and did not rapidly change. On the other hand, living things are subject to change and have a tendency to decompose, which led Stahl to work with fermentation.

Stahl professed an [[animism|animistic]] system, in opposition to the [[materialism]] of [[Hermann Boerhaave]] and Friedrich Hoffmann.<ref>* Francesco Paolo de Ceglia: ''Hoffmann and Stahl. Documents and Reflections on the Dispute.'' in ''History of Universities'' 22/1 (2007): 98–140.</ref> His main argument on living things was that there is an agent responsible for delaying this decomposition of living things and that agent is the ''anima'' or soul of the living organism. The ''anima'' controls all of the physical processes that happen in the body. It not only just controls the mechanical aspects of it but the direction and goals of them too.<ref name="source 2"/> How the anima controls these processes is through motion. He believed that the three important motions of the body are the [[circulation of blood]], [[excretion]] and [[secretion]].

These beliefs were reflected in his views on medicine. He thought that medicine should deal with the body as a whole and its ''anima'', rather than the specific parts of a body. Having knowledge on the specific mechanical parts of the body is not very useful.<ref name="source 2"/> His views had been criticized by [[Gottfried Leibniz]], with whom he exchanged letters, later published in a book titled ''Negotium otiosum seu σκιαμαχία'' (1720).<ref>Smets, Alexis. [http://www.euchems.eu/fileadmin/user_upload/binaries/34_Smets_tcm23-139379.pdf ''The Controversy Between Leibniz and Stahl on the Theory of Chemistry''] {{webarchive |url=https://web.archive.org/web/20120425064355/http://www.euchems.eu/fileadmin/user_upload/binaries/34_Smets_tcm23-139379.pdf |date=2012-04-25 }}, Proceedings of the 6th International Conference on History of Chemistry</ref><ref>''The Leibniz-Stahl Controversy'' (2016), transl. and edited by F. Duchesneau and J.H. Smith, Yale UP (536pp.)</ref> Also, during the first part of the 18th century, Stahl's ideas on the non-physical part of the body were disregarded while his mechanistic ideas on the body were accepted in the works of Boerhaave and Hoffmann.<ref name="source 4">Vartanian, Aram (2006) "Stahl, Georg Ernst (1660–1734)", ''Encyclopedia of Philosophy'', editor Donald M. Borchert. 2nd ed. Vol. 9. Detroit: Macmillan Reference USA. 202–203. Gale Virtual Reference Library. Web. 26 May 2013.</ref>

===Tonic motion===
As a physician, Stahl worked with patients and focused on the soul, or ''anima'', as well as blood circulation and tonic motion. ''Anima'' was a vital force that when working properly would allow the subject to be healthy; however, when malfunction of the ''anima'' occurred, so did illness. Tonic motion, to Stahl, involved the contracting and relaxing movements of the body tissue in order to serve the three main purposes. Tonic motion helped explain how animals produce [[heat]] and how [[fever]]s were caused. In Stahl's 1692 dissertation, ''De motu tonico vitali,'' Stahl explains his theory of tonic motion and how it is connected to blood flow within a subject, without citing [[William Harvey]]'s blood flow and circulation theories, which lacked an explanation of irregular blood flow. Also within the dissertation, 'practitioners' are mentioned as users of his theory of tonic motion.

Stahl's theory of ''tonic motion'' was about the [[muscle tone]] of the [[circulatory system]]. During his work at Halle, Stahl oversaw patients experiencing [[headache]]s and [[nosebleed]]s. Tonic motion explained these phenomena as blood needed a natural or artificial path to flow when a part of the body is obstructed, injured, or swollen. Stahl also experimented with [[menstruation]], finding that [[bloodletting]] in an upper portion of the body would relieve bleeding during the period. During the next period, the wound would experience pain and swelling, which would only be relieved by an opening in the foot. He also followed this procedure as a treatment for [[amenorrhoea]].<ref>{{cite journal|last1=Chang|first1=K|title=Motus Tonicus: Georg Ernst Stahl's Formulation of Tonic Motion and Early Modern Medical Thought|journal=[[Bulletin of the History of Medicine]]|date=2004|volume=78|issue=4|pages=767–803|doi=10.1353/bhm.2004.0161|pmid=15591695|s2cid=12488842|url=https://muse.jhu.edu/|access-date=20 April 2016|url-access=subscription}}</ref>

==Chemistry==
The best of Stahl's work in chemistry was done while he was a professor at Halle. Just like medicine, he believed that chemistry could not be reduced to [[mechanistic]] views. Although he believed in atoms, he did not believe that atomic theories were enough to describe the chemical processes that goes on. He believed that atoms could not be isolated individually and that they join to form elements. He took an empirical approach when establishing his descriptions of chemistry.<ref name="source 3"/>

Stahl used the works of [[Johann Joachim Becher]] to help him come up with explanations of chemical phenomena. The main theory that Stahl got from J. J. Becher was the theory of [[phlogiston]]. This theory did not have any experimental basis before Stahl. Becher's theories attempted in explaining chemistry as comprehensively as seemingly possible through classifying different earths according to specific reactions. ''Terra pinguis'' was a substance that escaped during combustion reactions, according to Becher.<ref>{{cite book|last1=Hudson|first1=John|title=The History of Chemistry|date=1992|publisher=The Macmillan Press|location=Hong Kong|isbn=0-412-03641-X|page=47}}<!--|access-date=26 February 2016--></ref> Stahl, influenced by Becher's work, developed his theory of phlogiston. Phlogiston theory did not have any experimental basis before Stahl worked with metals and various other substances in order separate phlogiston from them. Stahl proposed that metals were made of calx, or ash, and phlogiston and that once a metal is heated, the phlogiston leaves only the calx within the substance. He was able to make the theory applicable to chemistry as it was one of the first unifying theories in the discipline. Phlogiston provided an explanation of various chemical phenomena and encouraged the chemists of the time to rationally work with the theory to explore more of the subject. This theory was later replaced by Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier's theory of [[oxidation]] and [[caloric theory]].<ref name="source 1"/> He also propounded a view of [[fermentation (biochemistry)|fermentation]], which in some respects resembles that supported by [[Justus von Liebig]] a century and half later. Although his theory was replaced, Stahl's theory of phlogiston is seen to be the transition between [[alchemy]] and chemistry.<ref name="source 3"/>

Stahl is credited for being among the first to describe [[carbon monoxide]] as noxious ''carbonarii halitus'' (carbonic vapors) in his 1697 publication ''Zymotechnia fundamentalis.''<ref>{{Cite journal|last=Hopper|first=Christopher P.|last2=Zambrana|first2=Paige N.|last3=Goebel|first3=Ulrich|last4=Wollborn|first4=Jakob|date=June 2021|title=A brief history of carbon monoxide and its therapeutic origins|url=https://linkinghub.elsevier.com/retrieve/pii/S1089860321000367|journal=Nitric Oxide|language=en|volume=111-112|pages=45–63|doi=10.1016/j.niox.2021.04.001|url-access=subscription}}</ref>

== Family ==
Georg Ernst Stahl was married three times. His first wife was Catharina Margaretha Miculcin (1668–1696). After the death of his first wife in 1696, he married Barbara Eleonora Tentzel (1686–1706) on 12 February 1705, daughter of the Electoral Brandenburg Tax Council in Halle (Saale) Johann Christian Tentzel. After the death of his second wife in 1706, on 26 February 1711 he married Regina Elisabeth Wesener (1683–1730), daughter of the city doctor in Halle, Wolfgang Christoph Wesener (1640–1706). 

He had nine children:

* Johann August Stahl (b. 1694)
* Christina Catharina Sophia Stahl (b. 1696)
* Eleonora Stahl (1706–1708)
* Regina Ernestina Stahl (b. 1712), married Johann August Arends (1703–1747).
* {{ill|Georg Ernst Stahl Jr.|de|Georg Ernst Stahl der Jüngere}} (1713–1772), in 1741 married Johanna Elisabeth Schrader (1725–1763), daughter of pharmacist {{ill|Johann Christoph Schrader|de}} (1683–1744), had nine children.
* Johann Christoph Stahl (b. 1714)
* Sophie Dorothea Stahl (b. 1716)
* Catharina Charlotta Louisa Stahl (1717–1784), in 1735 married royal Prussian Court Councillor and Professor university {{ill|Johann Samuel Friedrich von Böhmer|de}} (1704–1772), had ten children, including {{ill|Georg Friedrich von Böhmer|de}} (1739–1797).
* Sophia Rosina Stahl (1722–1801), in 1740 married Hofkriminalrat and Postrat in Berlin Johann Georg Buchholtz (1714–1771).

==Works==
[[File:Stahl, Georg Ernst – De lapide manati, 1710 – BEIC 8673615.jpg|thumb|''De lapide manati'', 1710]]
* ''Zymotechnia fundamentalis'' (1697)
* {{Cite book|title=De lumbricis terrestribus eorumque usu medico|volume=|publisher=Christian Henckel|location=Halle|year=1698|language=la|url=https://gutenberg.beic.it/webclient/DeliveryManager?pid=8673516}}
* ''Disquisitio de mechanismi et organismi diversitate'' (1706)
* ''Paraenesis, ad aliena a medica doctrine arcendum'' (1706)
* ''De vera diversitate corporis mixti et vivi'' (1706)
* ''Theoria medica vera'' (1708)
* {{Cite book|title=De lapide manati|volume=|publisher=Christian Henckel|location=Halle|year=1710|language=la|url=https://gutenberg.beic.it/webclient/DeliveryManager?pid=8673615}}
* ''Georgii Ernesti Stahlii opusculum chymico-physico-medicum : seu schediasmatum, a pluribus annis variis occasionibus in publicum emissorum nunc quadantenus etiam auctorum et deficientibus passim exemplaribus in unum volumen iam collectorum, fasciculus publicae luci redditus / Praemißa praefationis loco authoris epistola ad Michaelem Alberti'' (1715) [http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:hbz:061:2-9876 Digital edition] by the [[University and State Library Düsseldorf]]
* ''Specimen Beccherianum'' (1718)<ref name= "source 2"/>
* ''[https://archive.org/details/philosophicalpr00shawgoog Philosophical Principles of Universal Chemistry]'' (1730), Peter Shaw, translator, from [[Open Library]].
* {{Cite book|title=Experimenta, observationes, animadversiones, 300. numero, chymicae et physicae|volume=|publisher=Ambrosius Haude|location=Berlin|year=1731|language=la|url=https://gutenberg.beic.it/webclient/DeliveryManager?pid=12229240}}
* ''Materia medica : das ist: Zubereitung, Krafft und Würckung, derer sonderlich durch chymische Kunst erfundenen Artzneyen'' (1744), Vol. 1&2 [http://nbn-resolving.de/urn:nbn:de:hbz:061:2-26319 Digital edition] by the [[University and State Library Düsseldorf]]
* {{Cite book|title=Fundamenta chymiae|volume=3|publisher=Wolfgang Moritz Endter, Erben & Julius Arnold Engelbrecht, Witwe|location=Nürnberg|year=1747|language=la|url=https://gutenberg.beic.it/webclient/DeliveryManager?pid=8601098}}
* {{Cite book|title=Fundamenta chymiae|volume=2|publisher=Wolfgang Moritz Endter, Erben & Julius Arnold Engelbrecht, Witwe|location=Nürnberg|year=1746|language=la|url=https://gutenberg.beic.it/webclient/DeliveryManager?pid=8600117}}
*''The Leibniz-Stahl Controversy'' (2016), transl. and edited by F. Duchesneau and J. H. Smith, Yale UP (536 pp.)

==References==
{{Reflist}}
* [[Hélène Metzger]] (1926) "La philosophie de la matière chez Stahl et ses disciples", [[Isis (journal)|Isis]] 8: 427–464.
* Hélène Metzger (1930) ''Newton, Stahl, Boerhaave et la Doctrine Chemique''
* Lawrence M. Principe (2007) ''Chymists and Chymistry''.

==External links==
* {{Internet Archive author |sname=Georg Ernst Stahl}}
* {{MathGenealogy|id=123977}}

{{Authority control}}

{{DEFAULTSORT:Stahl, Georg Ernst}}
[[Category:1659 births]]
[[Category:1734 deaths]]
[[Category:People from Ansbach]]
[[Category:People from the Principality of Ansbach]]
[[Category:Chemists from the Kingdom of Prussia]]
[[Category:18th-century German chemists]]
[[Category:17th-century German medical doctors]]
[[Category:18th-century German medical doctors]]
[[Category:17th-century German writers]]
[[Category:17th-century German male writers]]
[[Category:18th-century German writers]]
[[Category:18th-century German male writers]]
[[Category:University of Jena alumni]]
[[Category:Vitalists]]
[[Category:17th-century German chemists]]