Basil
Valentine whose writings were supposed to have inspired Paracelsus was
a hoax and his works were made up in great part from the writings
of Paracelsus, then to our medical Luther, and not to the mythical
Benedictine monk, must be attributed a great revival in the search
for the Philosopher's Stone, for the Elixir of Life, for a universal
medicine, for the perpetuum mobile and for an aurum potabile.(37) I
reproduce, almost at random, a page from the fifth and last part of the
last will and testament of Basil Valentine (London, 1657), from which
you may judge the chemical spirit of the time.

(36) Withington: Medical History from the Earliest Times,
London, 1891, Scientific Press, p. 317.

(37) See Professor Stillman on the Basil Valentine hoax, Popular
Science Monthly, New York, 1919, LXXXI, 591-600.

Out of the mystic doctrines of Paracelsus arose the famous "Brothers of
the Rosy Cross." "The brotherhood was possessed of the deepest knowledge
and science, the transmutation of metals, the perpetuum mobile and
the universal medicine were among their secrets; they were free from
sickness and suffering during their lifetime, though subject finally to
death."(38)

(38) Ferguson: Bibliotheca Chemica, Vol. II, p. 290. For an
account of Fludd and the English Rosicrucians see Craven's Life
of Fludd, Kirkwall, 1902.

A school of a more rational kind followed directly upon the work of
Paracelsus, in which the first man of any importance was Van Helmont.
The Paracelsian Archeus was the presiding spirit in living creatures,
and worked through special local ferments, by which the functions of the
organs are controlled. Disease of any part represents a strike on the
part of the local Archeus, who refuses to work. Though full of fanciful
ideas, Van Helmont had the experimental spirit and was the first chemist
to discover the diversity of gases. Like his teacher, he was in revolt
against the faculty, and he has bitter things to say of physicians. He
got into trouble with the Church about the magnetic cure of wounds, as
no fewer than twenty-seven propositions incompatible with the Catholic
faith were found in his pamphlet (Ferguson). The Philosophus per ignem,
Toparcha in Merode, Royenborch, as he is styled in certain of his
writings, is not an easy man to tackle. I show the title-page of the
"Ortus Medicinae," the collection of his works by his son. As with the
pages of Paracelsus, ther