[Commemoration days 1980 from the history of the Witenberg Medical School (I): Chemistry in the medical education program of the 17th and 18th centuries].

Actual anniversaries with the 350th return of the birthday of Johann Kunckel and the 300th birthday of Johann Theodor Neukrantz give rise to recall the early history of the Wittenberg Collegium chymicum and to analyse its value in the medical education. At the university of Wittenberg this tutorial which is significant for the progress of medicine and which has been quickly acknowledged as highly important by other universities has been neglected by the state in most cases. But the more remarkable are the individual achievements of a number of specialists engaged in chemistry, whose practices in teaching and research are described in this paper.