Christopher Glaser

Christopher Glaser (1615 – between 1670 and 1678), a pharmaceutical chemist of the 17th century.

Life

He was born in Basel. He became demonstrator of chemistry, as successor of Lefebvre, at the Jardin du Roi in Paris, and apothecary to Louis XIV and to the Duke of Orléans. He is best known through his Traité de la chymie (Paris, 1663), which went through some ten editions in about twenty-five years, and was translated into both German and English.

It has been alleged that he was an accomplice in the notorious poisonings carried out by Madame de Brinvilliers, but the extent of his complicity in providing Godin de Sainte-Croix poison in the Affair of the Poisons is doubtful. He appears to have died before 1676. The sal polychrestum Glaseri is normal potassium sulfate which Glaser prepared and used medicinally. The mineral K₃Na(SO₄) ₂ (Glaserite) is named after him.

Further reading

• Mi Gyung Kim - Affinity, that Elusive Dream: A Genealogy of the Chemical Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press (2003) ISBN 0-262-11273-6)
• Martyn Paine - Materia medica and therapeutics (3 ed) (New York (1859))
• Anne Somerset - The Affair of the Poisons: Murder, Infanticide, and Satanism at the Court of Louis XIV (St. Martin's Press (October 12, 2003) ISBN 0-312-33017-0)

Sources

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•  This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain: 

External links

• Long table of chemists with short note of Glaser