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Van Helmont introduced radical empiricism into medicine in his posthumously published compendium, Ortus medicinae (1648) (van Helmont 1683). He argued, following the teachings of Paracelsus (1493/4-1541), against the notion that the imbalance of the humors caused illness. For him there had to be material reasons. Van Helmont imagined that there might be “wild spirits,” which could neither be seen nor kept in vessels. He called them “chaos” (pronounced in Dutch, “gas”). Everything, when burnt, gave off different gases: Gas carbonum from burning charcoal, gas sylvester from fermenting wine and spa water, inflammable gas pinque from organic matter. His physiology was likewise material; he believed that each organ had its own spirit, or blas. This view was quite different than Paracelsus’ belief that a single archeus or spirit animated the entire body. In retrospect, it is clear that van Helmont used a highly religious vocabulary to frame his materialism, which was informed by the religious world in which he functioned. Van Helmont’s text on medicine is a seventeenth-century mix between highly speculative religious imagery and the technical medicine of his time, but it also included a long treatise on longevity.