(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.
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