The History of Chemistry. Thomas Thomson

Viribus.

      Perhaps the most curious of all these works is the Rosarium, which is intended as a complete compend of all the alchymy of his time. The first part of it on the theory of the art is plain enough; but the second part on the practice, which is subdivided into thirty-two chapters, and which professes to teach the art of making the philosopher’s stone, is in many places quite unintelligible to me.

      He considered, like his predecessors, mercury as a constituent of metals, and he professed a knowledge of the philosopher’s stone, which he could increase at pleasure. Gold and gold-water was, in his opinion, one of the most precious of medicines. He employed mercury in medicine. He seems to designate bismuth under the name marcasite. He was in the habit of preparing oil of turpentine, oil of rosemary, and spirit of rosemary, which afterwards became famous under the name of Hungary-water. These distillations were made in a glazed earthen vessel with a glass top and helm.

      His works were published at Venice in a single folio volume, in the year 1505. There were seven subsequent editions, the last of which appeared at Strasburg in 1613.

      6. John Isaac Hollandus and his countryman of the same name, were either two brothers or a father and son; it is uncertain which. For very few circumstances respecting these two laborious and meritorious men have been handed down to posterity. They were born in the village of Stolk in Holland, it is supposed in the 13th century. They certainly were after Arnoldus de Villa Nova, because they refer to him in their writings. They wrote many treatises on chemistry, remarkable, considering the time when they wrote, for clearness and precision, describing their processes with accuracy, and even giving figures of the instruments which they employed. This makes their books intelligible, and they deserve attention because they show that various processes, generally supposed of a more modern date were known to them. Their treatises are written partly in Latin and partly in German. The following list contains the names of most of them: 1. Opera Vegetabilia ad ejus alia Opera Intelligenda Necessaria. 2. Opera Mineralia seu de Lapide Philosophico Libri duo. 3. Tractat vom stein der Weisen. 4. Fragmenta Quædam Chemica. 5. De Triplice Ordine Elixiris et Lapidis Theorea. 6. Tractatus de Salibus et Oleis Metallorum. 7. Fragmentum de Opere Philosophorum. 8. Rariores Chemiæ Operationes. 9. Opus Saturni. 10. De Spiritu Urinæ. 11. Hand der Philosopher.

      Olaus Borrichius complains that their opera mineralia abound with processes; but that they are ambiguous, and such that nothing certain can be deduced from them even after much labour. Hence they draw on the unwary tyro from labour to labour. I am disposed myself to draw a different conclusion, from what I have read of that elaborate work. It is true that the processes which profess to make the philosopher’s stone, are fallacious, and do not lead to the manufacture of gold, as the author intended, and expected: but it is a great deal when alchymistical processes are delivered in such intelligible language that you know the substances employed. This enables us easily to see the results in almost every case, and to know the new compounds which were formed during a vain search for the philosopher’s stone. Had the other alchymists written as plainly, the absurdity of their researches would have been sooner discovered, and thus a useless or pernicious investigation would have sooner terminated.

      7. Basil Valentine is said to have been born about the year 1394, and is, perhaps, the most celebrated of all the alchymists, if we except Paracelsus. He was a Benedictine monk, at Erford, in Saxony. If we believe Olaus Borrichius, his writings were enclosed in the wall of a church at Erford, and were discovered long after his death, in consequence of the wall having been driven down by a thunderbolt. But this story is not well authenticated, and is utterly improbable. Much of his time seems to have been taken up in the preparation of chemical medicines. It was he that first introduced antimony into medicine; and it is said, though on no good authority, that he first tried the effects of antimonial medicines upon the monks of his convent, upon whom it acted with such violence that he was induced to distinguish the mineral from which these medicines had been extracted, by the name of antimoine (hostile to monks). What shows the improbability of this story is, that the works of Basil Valentine, and in particular his Currus triumphalis Antimonii, were written in the German language. Now the German name for antimony is not antimoine, but speissglass. The Currus triumphalis Antimonii was translated into Latin by Kerkringius, who published it, with an excellent commentary, at Amsterdam, in 1671.

      Basil Valentine writes with almost as much virulence against the physicians of his time, as Paracelsus himself did afterwards. As no particulars of his life have been handed down to posterity, I shall satisfy myself with giving a catalogue of his writings, and then pointing out the most striking chemical substances with which he was acquainted.

      The books which have appeared under the name of Basil Valentine, are very numerous; but how many of them were really written by him, and how many are supposititious, is extremely doubtful. The following are the principal: 1. Philosophia Occulta. 2. Tractat von naturlichen und ubernaturlichen Dingen; auch von der ersten tinctur, Wurzel und Geiste der Metallen. 3. Von dern grossen stein der Uhralten. 4. Vier tractatlein vom stein der Weisen. 5. Kurzer anhang und klare repetition oder Wiederholunge vom grosen stein der Uhralten. 6. De prima Materia Lapidis Philosophici. 7. Azoth Philosophorum seu Aureliæ occultæ de Materia Lapidis Philosophorum. 8. Apocalypsis Chemica. 9. Claves 12 Philosophiæ. 10. Practica. 11. Opus præclarum ad utrumque, quod pro Testamento dedit Filio suo adoptivo. 12. Letztes Testament. 13. De Microcosmo. 14. Von der grosen Heimlichkeit der Welt und ihrer Arzney. 15. Von der Wissenschaft der sieben Planeten. 16. Offenbahrung der verborgenen Handgriffe. 17. Conclusiones or Schlussreden. 18. Dialogus Fratris Alberti cum Spiritu. 19. De Sulphure et fermento Philosophorum. 20. Haliographia. 21. Triumph wagen Antimonii. 22. Einiger Weg zur Wahrheit. 23. Licht der Natur.

      The only one of these works that I have read with care, is Kerkringius’s translation and commentary on the Currus triumphalis Antimonii. It is an excellent book, written with clearness and precision, and contains every thing respecting antimony that was known before the commencement of the 19th century. How much of this is owing to Kerkringius I cannot say, as I have never had an opportunity of seeing a copy of the original German work of Basil Valentine.

      Basil Valentine, like Isaac Hollandus, was of opinion that the metals are compounds of salt, sulphur, and mercury. The philosopher’s stone was composed of the same ingredients. He affirmed, that there exists a great similarity between the mode of purifying gold and curing the diseases of men, and that antimony answers best for both. He was acquainted with arsenic, knew many of its properties, and mentions the red compound which it forms with sulphur. Zinc seems to have been known to him, and he mentions bismuth, both under its own name, and under that of marcasite. He was aware that manganese was employed to render glass colourless. He mentions nitrate of mercury, alludes to corrosive sublimate, and seems to have known the red oxide of mercury. It would be needless to specify the preparations of antimony with which he was acquainted; scarcely one was unknown to him which, even at present, exists in the European Pharmacopœias. Many of the preparations of lead were also familiar to him. He was aware that lead gives a sweet taste to vinegar. He knew sugar of lead, litharge, yellow oxide of lead, white carbonate of lead; and mentions that this last preparation was often adulterated in his time. He knew the method of making green vitriol, and the double chloride of iron and ammonia. He was aware that iron could be precipitated from its solution by potash, and that iron has the property of throwing down copper. He was aware that tin sometimes contains iron, and ascribed the brittleness of Hungarian iron to copper. He knew that oxides of copper gave a green colour to glass; that Hungarian silver contained gold; that gold is precipitated from aqua regia by mercury, in the state of an amalgam. He mentions fulminating gold. But the important facts contained in his works are so numerous, while we are so uncertain about the genuineness of the writings themselves, that it will scarcely be worth while to proceed further with the catalogue.

      Thus I have brought the history of alchymy to the time of Paracelsus, when it was doomed to undergo a new and important change. It will be better, therefore, not to pursue the history of alchymy further, but to take up the history of true chemistry; and in the first place to endeavour to determine what chemical facts were known to the Ancients, and how far the science had proceeded to develop itself before the time of Paracelsus.

      CHAPTER II.

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