Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society » Van Helmont’s Hebrew Tongues

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May 11th, 2007

Van Helmont’s Hebrew Tongues

In 1667, the Belgian physician Francis Mercury van Helmont, son of the noted alchemist Jean Baptiste van Helmont, published one of the most wonderfully misguided linguistic theories of the 17th century in The Alphabet of Nature. The book, written in the prisons of the Roman Inquisition, will soon be republished in English translation. Like many at the time, including Father Kircher, von Helmont was convinced that Hebrew was the Adamic proto-language spoken before the confusio linguarum at Babel. Van Helmont was further convinced that as the tongue of Creation, Hebrew was a language of such perfection that anyone, even a deaf-mute could learn it. From The Search for the Perfect Language by Umberto Eco:

Van Helmont proceeded to demonstrate that the sounds of Hebrew were the ones most easily reproduced by the human vocal organs. Then, with the assistance of thirty-three wood-cuts, he showed how, in making the sounds of Hebrew, the movement of tongue, palate, uvula and glottis reproduced the shapes of the corresponding Hebrew letters… Not only did the Hebrew sounds reflect the inherent nature of things themselves, but the very mud from which the human vocal organs were formed had been especially sculpted to emit a perfect language that God pressed on Adam in not only its spoken but evidently its written form as well.

Von Helmont claimed to have taught a deaf-mute to speak in just three weeks simply by instructing him to form the letters of the Hebrew alphabet with his tongue. Though his loopy theory about Hebrew-shaped tongues never caught on, van Helmont was nevertheless an early pioneer in teaching the deaf to speak. Watch this video of Anne Sullivan explaining the methods she used to teach Helen Keller.

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