[Jean-Baptiste Van Helmont (1579-1644), the baroque and teeth]

J. B. Van Helmont has been qualified as a medical exponent of the baroque spirit. This affirmation can only be accepted in the following sense: as Harvey, but in an other way. Van Helmont has prepared modern medicine notwithstanding their fidelity to the philosophy of nature (aristotelism or irrationalism) of the sixteenth century. Van Helmont, who believed in the occult forces of the teeth, was also the first to denounce the catarrhe as a cause of toothache.