William Cullen and Joseph Black: Chemistry, Medicine, and the Scottish Enlightenment

The Enlightenment was a highly diverse intellectual movement that emerged in the first half of the 18th century. Its central theme was the move from given knowledge to rationalism. The scientific method of gaining knowledge started to permeate arts and hu-manities; a formalized approach to social sciences, his-tory, and the arts was attempted (1). The major pillar of Enlightenment thinking was Newtonian physics. It was thought that Isaac Newton (1642–1727) managed to scientifically understand and describe (completely and finally was the assumption) natural phenomena. Science was seen as a path to ab-solute truth. There was also the idea of linear progress, which was rather hurriedly extended to all fields, in-cluding the new social sciences. These tenets, en-trenched in Enlightenment thinking, in spite of their inaccuracy, curiously still surface from time to time in contemporary thinking. TheEnlightenment started in France,whereVoltaire (1694–1778) and the Encyclopedists were its major pro-ponents. Eventually, one of its foci became Scotland after the Glorious Revolution in England in 1688, and the Act of Union in 1707, which created Britain (2). At that time, chemistry was causing increasing inter-est among medical people. William Cullen (1710–1790) was the holder of the chair of chemistry at the University ofGlasgow, the first one inBritain (3). From1740,Cullen lectured on medicine, materia medica, and botany, and set up the teaching of chemistry. Theminutes of theUni-versity Senate from June 26, 1749, read: Dr. Cullen having received about 2 years ago fifty two pounds sterling to be laid out in building furnaces and fitting up a Laboratory and purchasing the necessary ves-sels for it... acquainted the Faculty of the success of this attempt to begin Chemical Lessons in the University, and the University meeting now return him thanks for the great care and pains he has been at in giving Chemical Lessons and explaining them constantly by the most use