Neder-over-Heembeek
Encyclopedia
Neder-over-Heembeek is a northern part of the City of Brussels
municipality in Belgium
. It is a commune which lost its municipality status when it was merged with the City of Brussels.
It was once a small village on the edge of medieval Brussels, but is now a predominantly industrial zone, remarkable principally for the Military Hospital, which is the National Burns and Poisons center.
. His son Mercurius, a close friend, tutor and collaborator of Leibniz
, records that one evening, a stranger knocked at the door and was admitted. The two men talked late into the night about alchemy, and on leaving, the stranger left van Helmont with some unusual powder: he immediately mixed it with eight ounces of mercury, sealed in a clay crucible which was heated over the fire for twenty minutes, and broke the pot - to find eight ounces of gold. There are some suggestions that this visitor may have been a researcher who had had a significant hand in events leading up to the execution of the Counts of Egmont and Hoorne for heresy in 1568. This opened van Helmont's eyes to the possibility of scientific process, and he went on to become one of the founding fathers of modern chemistry.
In 1843, the same farm became the residence of Count Gioacchino Pecci, the Papal Nuncio, who showed a more than passing interest in searching the place from top to bottom. Count Pecci became Pope Leo XIII in 1878.
City of Brussels
The City of Brussels is the largest municipality of the Brussels-Capital Region, and the official capital of Belgium by law....
municipality in Belgium
Belgium
Belgium , officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a federal state in Western Europe. It is a founding member of the European Union and hosts the EU's headquarters, and those of several other major international organisations such as NATO.Belgium is also a member of, or affiliated to, many...
. It is a commune which lost its municipality status when it was merged with the City of Brussels.
It was once a small village on the edge of medieval Brussels, but is now a predominantly industrial zone, remarkable principally for the Military Hospital, which is the National Burns and Poisons center.
Pronunciation
- DutchDutch languageDutch is a West Germanic language and the native language of the majority of the population of the Netherlands, Belgium, and Suriname, the three member states of the Dutch Language Union. Most speakers live in the European Union, where it is a first language for about 23 million and a second...
: ˈneːdər ˈoːvər ˈɦeːmbeːk - FrenchFrench languageFrench is a Romance language spoken as a first language in France, the Romandy region in Switzerland, Wallonia and Brussels in Belgium, Monaco, the regions of Quebec and Acadia in Canada, and by various communities elsewhere. Second-language speakers of French are distributed throughout many parts...
: neˈdəʁ ovˈəʁ emˈbek
Jan van Helmont and alchemy
In 1618 or thereabouts, a most curious incident changed the course of scientific history here. In a farm near the church lived the local medic, one Jan van Helmont, a follower of the teachings of ParacelsusParacelsus
Paracelsus was a German-Swiss Renaissance physician, botanist, alchemist, astrologer, and general occultist....
. His son Mercurius, a close friend, tutor and collaborator of Leibniz
Gottfried Leibniz
Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz was a German philosopher and mathematician. He wrote in different languages, primarily in Latin , French and German ....
, records that one evening, a stranger knocked at the door and was admitted. The two men talked late into the night about alchemy, and on leaving, the stranger left van Helmont with some unusual powder: he immediately mixed it with eight ounces of mercury, sealed in a clay crucible which was heated over the fire for twenty minutes, and broke the pot - to find eight ounces of gold. There are some suggestions that this visitor may have been a researcher who had had a significant hand in events leading up to the execution of the Counts of Egmont and Hoorne for heresy in 1568. This opened van Helmont's eyes to the possibility of scientific process, and he went on to become one of the founding fathers of modern chemistry.
In 1843, the same farm became the residence of Count Gioacchino Pecci, the Papal Nuncio, who showed a more than passing interest in searching the place from top to bottom. Count Pecci became Pope Leo XIII in 1878.