Georg Ernst Stahl

Georg Ernst Stahl (1660-1734), German chemist and physician, was born on October 21 1660 at Anspach[?].

Having graduated in medicine at Jena in 1683, he became court physician to the duke of Weimar[?] in 1687. From 1694 to 1716 he held the chair of medicine at Halle, and was then appointed physician to the king of Prussia in Berlin, where he died on May 24 1734.

In chemistry he is chiefly known in connexion with his doctrine of phlogiston, the essentials of which, however, he owed to JJ Becher; and he also propounded a view of fermentation which in some respects resembles that supported by Liebig a century and half later. In medicine he professed an animistic system, in opposition to the materialism of Hermann Boerhaave and Friedrich Hoffmann.

The most important of his numerous writings are Zymotechnia fundamenlalis sive fermentalionis theoria generalis (1697), which contains the phlogistic hypothesis; Specimen Becherianum (1702); Experimenta, observationes, aniniadversiones ... chymicae et physicae (1731); Theoria medica vera (1707); Ars sanandi cum expectalione (1730).

This entry was originally from the 1911 Encyclopedia Britannica.