Glaser, Christopher

(b. Basel, Switzerland, ca. 1615; d. Paris, France, 1672 [?])

pharmacy, chemistry.

Little is known about Glaser’s early life, but he seems to have been trained as a pharmacist in his native city, and references in his published work indicate that he traveled in eastern Europe to observe mining practice. Sometime prior to 1662 he settled in Paris, where he opened an apothecary’s shop in the Faubourg Saint-Germain. Here he prospered, becoming apothecary in ordinary to Louis XIV and to the king’s brother, the duke of Orleans. He also enjoyed the patronage of Nicolas Fouquet, the illfated superintendent of finances. In 1662 he was appointed demonstrator in chemistry at the Jardin du Roi in Paris in succession to Nicolas Le Fèvre. The following year he published his only contribution to the literature of chemistry, Traité de la chymie, a textbook for his course. His most noted pupil in Paris was Nicolas Lemery.

The events of Glaser’s later life are likewise elusive. In 1672 he was implicated in the famous Brinvilliers poison case when evidence came to light that the marquise de Brinvilliers and her accomplice Gaudin de Sainte-Croix had used a recipe of Glaser’s to prepare the poison with which they disposed of the marquise’s father (1666) and two brothers (1669–1670). At this point Glaser disappeared from public life in France. If the preface by the printer to the 1673 edition of Glaser’s Trailé is to be believed, Glaser died before completing the revisions for this new edition, which received the approbation of the Paris Faculty of Medicine on 15 October 1672. At her interrogation in 1676 the marquise de Brinvilliers alleged that Glaser had indeed prepared poison for Sainte-Croix but that he had been dead for a long time. One source maintains, however, that Glaser returned to Basel, where he died in 1678 (see C. de Milt, “Christopher Glaser”).

In the series of French chemical manuals of the seventeenth century, that of Glaser appeared between the more famous works of Le Fèvre and Lemery. Whereas Le Fèvre’s textbook drew on the Paracelsian-Helmontian tradition for its theoretical content and Lemery attempted a corpuscularian interpretation of the processes he described, Glaser largely eschewed theory and was content with a straightforward, concise recital of chemical operations and recipes. In spite of considerable competition, Glaser’s textbook enjoyed some success. The fourteen editions recorded between 1666 and 1710 include one English and five German versions. The work is divided into two books: book I briefly describes the utility, definitions, principles, operations, and apparatus of chemistry: book II is devoted to a description of medicinal preparations drawn from the mineral, vegetable, and animal kingdoms. The section devoted to mineral remedies is by far the largest. Little is novel in these preparations, although Glaser displays individual refinements of technique. His recipe for a sel antifebrile (potassium sulfate made by heating saltpeter and sulfur and recrystallizing from water) became uniquely identified with him and was later known as sel polychrestum Glaseri. The naturally occurring mixed sulfate of sodium and potassium (3K₂SO₄:Na₂SO₄) was named glaserite in his honor.

Due to his influence on Lemery, Glaser’s importance for the development of chemistry was greater than the contents of his book at first indicate. Although Fontenelle in his éloge of Lemery states that Lemery, finding Glaser obscure and secretive, abandoned studies with him after two months in 1666, the early editions of Lemery’s highly successful Cours de chymie bear a remarkable resemblance both in organization and content to Glaser’s textbook. There seems little doubt that Glaser’s modest work served as a model for at least the practical part of the most popular chemical textbook of the late seventeenth century.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I. Original Works. For the various eds. and reprs. of Glaser’s textbook see Partington, de Milt, and Neville in the works cited below. The first ed. has the title Traité de la chymie, enseignant par une briève et facile méthode toutes ses plus nécessaires préparations (Paris, 1663). The most important subsequent eds. (Paris, 1668, 1673) both contain the author’s additions and corrections. An English trans., based on the 1668 ed., is The Compleat Chymist, or A New Treatise, of Chymistry (London, 1677). Two separate German translations are Chimischer Wegweiser (Jena, 1677), and Novum laboratorium medico-chymicum (Nuremberg, 1677). The Jena vers, was reprinted several times, the last in 1710.

II. Secondary Literature. Works on Glaser and his Traité are H. Lagarde, “Christopher Glaser, professeur de chimie au Jardin des Plantes, apothicaire du roi, fournisseur de la Brinvilliers,” in Mémoires de la Société d’émulation du Doubs, 6th ser., 5 (1890), 407–421; H. Metzger, Les doctrines chimiques en France du début du XVII^e à la fin du XVIII^e sièlele, repr. (Paris, 1969), pp. 82–86: C. de Milt, “Christopher Glaser,” in Journal of Chemical Education, 19 (1942), 53–60; R. G. Neville, “Christopher Glaser and the Traité de la Chymie, 1663,” in Chymia, 10 (1965), 25–52; J. R. Partington, A History of Chemistry, III (London, 1962), 24–26; and J. Read, Humour and Humanism in Chemistry (London, 1947), pp. 114–115.

Documents relating to Glaser and the Brinvilliers case are in F. Ravaisson, Archives de la Bastille, IV (Paris, 1870), 237, 244, 250; VII (Paris, 1874), 44–46. An extensive bibliography on Glaser and the Brinvilliers affair is given in J. Ferguson, Bibliotheca Chemica. I (Glasgow, 1906), 321.

Owen Hannaway