CHAPTER XVIII

FAMOUS ALCHEMISTS OF THE
SIXTEENTH CENTURY

AMONG the alchemists who became famous in the six¬
teenth century the names of Basil Valentine, Paracelsus,
and Cornelius Agrippa stand prominent. The study of al¬
chemy at this period attracted many men of great intelligence,
with the result that a real advance was made in the science.
Some of them combined the practice of alchemy with that of
medicine and began to apply it to the treatment of bodily ail¬
ments and diseases, employing the chemical substances they had
discovered, which they justified by their belief that the vital
processes of the human body were chemical in their nature.

The identity of Basil Valentine is a mystery that has never
been satisfactorily solved. Whether he was a Benedictine
monk who lived at Erfurt or at Walkenried, or whether a real
person of this name ever existed, has never been determined.
The archives of the Benedictines make no mention of his name.
He is supposed to have flourished in the early part of the six¬
teenth century, but the date and authority of his works have
long been disputed. They are said to have been originally
circulated in manuscript, but no copies are known to exist.
Some declare them to be forgeries dating from about the year
1600, the information having been culled from various writers,
while others declare them to be the work of Johann Tholde, a
metallurgist and owner of some salt-mines at Frankenhausen, in
Thuringia, who published them and used the name ‘Valentine’
as a pseudonym. In any case, the author of the works we know
as Basil Valentine’s is shown to have been the most distin¬
guished alchemist of the period and one who had a remarkable

159

LURE S? ROMANCE OF ALCHEMY

knowledge of the science. The several treatises bearing his
name were not printed until the second half of the seventeenth
century, and the one by which he is best remembered, The
Triumphal Chariot of Antimony, was not known until 1685. In
this work he records many experiments made with antimony
and describes its medicinal properties. He made the regulus
of this metal, together with its ‘glass/ an oxysulphide, and
an oil, an elixir, flowers, liver, and a balsam.

He boldly advocated the use of chemical preparations for
medicinal purposes, which led to the iatro-chemical period,
inaugurated by Paracelsus, that later dominated medicine. He
shows a remarkable knowledge of practical chemistry, and
appears to have had some idea of qualitative analysis, as he was
able to detect several metals when mixed in small traces with
others. He shrewdly observes that much of the apparent
transmutation carried on by the fraudulent alchemists was due
to the effect of mixing metals in different proportions, and that
these mixtures contained neither gold nor silver. In other
treatises under his name, such as the Revelation of the Hidden
Key and The Great Stone of the Philosophers , he describes how
to obtain spirit of salt, the action of oil of vitriol on sea-
salt and brandy distilled from wine. He obtained copper from
pyrites by first obtaining a sulphate and then precipitating the
metal by plunging into the solution a bar of iron. He was
acquainted with arsenic, zinc, bismuth, and manganese, and
also with preparations of mercury and lead. He alludes
to fulminating gold, to the double chloride of iron and
ammonia, and describes methods of preparing many other
metallic salts.

One of the most disquieting considerations for those who seek
to identify Basil Valentine with a monk of the sixteenth century
is that in his works we find facts which are far in advance of
those generally known at that time, and yet with them we have
his adherence to the ancient alchemical theories. It is now
generally believed that his works were written after the time of
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ALCHEMISTS OF THE XVIth CENTURY

Paracelsus. He enunciates the same ideas regarding processes
happening within the earth as those pronounced in the Emerald
Tablet — viz., “Cause that which is above to be below,” and
“Let that which is below become that which is above.” Gold
was the intention of nature in regard to all metals. Plants were
preserved by their seed ; therefore there must be seed in metals,
which is their essence. If the seed could be separated and
brought into a proper condition it could be caused to grow into
the perfect metal. Health and life, he contended, were to be
preserved and ensured by the Philosopher’s Stone, which was
to be used as a universal medicine.

In The Great Stone of the Philosophers he states:

Whosoever thou art that presumest to dive into the fountain of
our work and hopest to obtain by my ambitious enterprise the
reward of Art, I tell thee by the Eternal Creator, for a truth of all
truths, that if there be a metalick soul, a metalick spirit, and a
metalick body that there must be a metalick Mercury, a metalick
sulphur, and a metalick salt which can of necessity produce no
other than a perfect metaline body. If you do not understand
this that you ought to understand, you are not adepted for Philo¬
sophy or God concealeth it from thee.

The method of preparing the Great Philosopher’s Stone he
reveals at the close of the book ; we need give but an outline of
it here. It begins :

Proceed in the name of the Lord to the work itself.

Take of the very best gold you can have, one part, and of good
Hungarian antimony six parts. Melt these together upon a fire
and pour it out into such a pot as the goldsmiths use, and when
you have poured it out it becomes a Regulus.

This Regulus is again melted and the antimony separated from
it. Then add mercury and melt it again. Do this three times.
Then beat the gold very thin and make an amalgam with more
quicksilver.

Let the quicksilver fume away over a gentle fire that nothing
remains but the gold. Then take one part of saltpetre and like
quantity of sal ammoniac and half as much of pebbles well washed.
Mix them and put into an earthen retort and distill in a furnace.

l 161

LURE 6? ROMANCE OF ALCHEMY

The water obtained is mixed with the prepared calx of gold and
water added. Then digest it in warm ashes and keep it at a gentle
heat for fourteen days. Water is then added, and it is again dis¬
tilled and redistilled until the gold comes over.

To this spiritualized solution of gold, rain water is added, and
three parts of mercury. Then decant the water and dry the
amalgam. Drive off the quicksilver, and there will remain a very
fair powder of a purple colour.

Then must be made the Tartar of the Philosophers from the
ashes of the vine and make a strong Lee with it to coagulation, and
there remains a reddish matter, and this dissolve in spirit of wine.
Then take the other part of mercury of pure gold and pour this on
it and distill. The precipitated mercury and the oyl of gold are
then to be mixed and placed in a glass and hermetically sealed and
put into a threefold furnace and allowed to putrify for a month
and become quite black.

Increase the fire and the blackness will vanish, and it changes
into many colours. Increase the fire to the fourth degree and the
glass will look like silver. Increase the fire to the fifth degree and
it becomes like gold. Continue this and you will see your matter
lye beneath like a brown oyl which at length becomes dry like
granite.

He that obtains this may render thanks to God, for poverty will
forsake him. For this noble medicine is such a stone to which
nothing in the world may be compared for virtue, riches, and
power.

He goes on to say that

if this medicine after being fermented with other pure gold doth
likewise tinge [dye] many thousand parts of all other metals into very
good gold, such gold likewise becometh a penetrat medicine that
one part of it doth tinge and transmute a thousand parts of other
metals and much more beyond belief into perfect gold.

Valentine’s process apparently consisted in coating — or, as he
calls it, tingeing — the baser metals with a gold amalgam and so
giving them the appearance of the precious metal, and by re¬
peating this process he thought the whole of the base metal
might be converted into gold. We find that this idea was ex¬
ploited by the pseudo-alchemists at a later date, and that by its
means they succeeded in duping many of their patrons.

162

ALCHEMISTS OF THE XVIth CENTURY

Few of the alchemists had a more adventurous and eventful
career than Henry Cornelius Agrippa, who was born in Cologne
in i486. He first served as a soldier under the Emperor of
Germany, and, after returning from a diplomatic mission, he
began to study alchemy and eventually became a reformer
and mystic. He set out to travel and journeyed through France,

HENRY CORNELIUS AGRIPPA

Spain, and Italy, and settled for a time at Pavia, where he
studied medicine and became a professor at the university of
that city. In his principal work, On Occult Philosophy , he ex¬
presses his belief in the doctrines of astrology and in the theory
that the spirit of the world exists in the body of the world as the
human spirit exists in the body of man. This spirit, he con¬
tends, abounds also in the celestial bodies and descends in the
rays of the stars, so that things influenced by their rays become
conformable to them. By this spirit every occult property is
conveyed into stones, metals, herbs, and animals through the

163

LURE & ROMANCE OF ALCHEMY

sun, moon, and planets, and through the stars higher than the
planets. He was a firm believer in the efficacy of charms, which,
he says, may “be worn on the body bound to any part of it or
hung round the neck, changing sickness into health or health
into sickness.” He also recommends that they be worn in the
form of finger-rings, and says :

When any star ascends fortunately, take a stone and herb that
are under that star, make a ring of the metal that is congruous
therewith, and in that fix the stone with the herb under it. We
read in Philostratus Iarchus that a wise prince of the Indies gave
seven rings made after this manner, marked with the names and
virtues of the seven planets to Apollonius, of which rings he wore
every day one, distinguishing them according to the names of the
days, and by the benefit of them lived one hundred and thirty years
and always retained the beauty of youth.

In 1510 Agrippa relinquished his alchemical work for a
time to resume service at Court, and, it is said, was sent by
Louis XII of France and Maximilian I of Austria on a secret
mission to London. He has left an interesting description of
London at the time of his visit. He tells us that there was
but one bridge across the Thames. Fleet Ditch had just been
dredged and was navigable for large boats laden with fish and
fuel up to Holborn. There was no pavement in Holborn
Street, which led by the Bishop of Ely’s palace and strawberry-
beds, skirting the country, to the open Oxford Road, and so
away, passing the hamlet of St Giles. Chancery Lane, Fetter
Lane, and Shoe Lane were unpaved and in a scarcely passable
condition. The city had its walls and gates; the cross in West-
cheap was its newest ornament. Stepney was still a town by
itself, remarkable for the pleasantness of its situation and the
beauty of its scenery, and chosen, therefore, as place of residence
by many persons of distinction. It was here, at the house of
John Colet, the Dean of St Paul’s, that he was lodged, and he
remarks that his host at that time was engaged over the re¬
foundation of St Paul’s School.

164

ALCHEMISTS OF THE XVIth CENTURY

On the conclusion of his mission he returned to Germany and
took up his residence at Metz, where he became the Town
Advocate and Orator. During his term of office a serious
epidemic of plague broke out in the city, and he set to work to
discover preventives and remedies to combat the disease.

Returning to Cologne, he again took up his alchemical studies,
but on the death of his wife he removed to Geneva, where he
practised medicine and joined the Reformers. Here he wrote a
work on the Vanity of Sciences and Arts , in which he appears to
have embodied his considered judgment from his experience in
the practice of medicine and alchemy throughout his lifetime.
With caustic satire he describes the foibles of the physicians of
the time, and alludes to their pomps and vanities and the way
these “bring practice to the man with a velvet coat and rings,
with certain shows of religion, who is addicted to uncompromis¬
ing self-assertion.” The book embroiled him in many disputes,
and he made numerous enemies. He further remarks on the
use of costly drugs obtained from a distance, such as scammony,
which could rarely be got except in the most adulterated state,
while the simples of the country, which could be prepared when
they were wanted, were despised and rejected.

He charges the apothecaries with dealing in adulterated drugs,
and taxes them with a vanity which drove them to cause the sick
even to eat human flesh spiced, which they call ‘mummy.’
Surgery, he declares, is a surer science, but of an evil origin, for
it was bred in war. But his most scathing criticisms are re¬
served for alchemy. “ I pass on,” he says,

to the crucible of alchemy, which consumes not less treasure than
the flesh-pots. The alchemist may earn a scanty livelihood by the
production of medicaments or cosmetics, or he may use his art,
as very many do, to carry on the business of a coiner. But the
true searcher after the Stone which is to metamorphose all base
metal into gold converts only farms, goods, and patrimonies into
ashes and smoke. When he expects the reward of his labours,
births of gold, youth, and immortality, after all his time and ex¬
pense, at length old, ragged, rich only in misery, and so miserable

LURE & ROMANCE OF ALCHEMY

that he will sell his soul for three farthings, he falls upon ill courses
as counterfeiting of money.

He adds:

I do not deny that to this art many excellent inventions owe their
origin. Hence we have the discovery of azure, cinnabar, minium,
purple, that which is called musical gold, and other colours.
Hence we derive the knowledge of brass and mixed metals, solders,
tests, and precipitants.

Judging from his experiences related in the Vanity of
Sciences and Arts , Agrippa appears to have tried all these things
and found them wanting. During his short and eventful life —
for he died before he reached the age of fifty — he had been a
soldier in Germany, a professor in Italy, a knight of the Empire,
secretary to Maximilian I, councillor to Charles V, a courtier in
Austria, a theologian at Dole, a lawyer at Metz, a physician in
Switzerland, and as deep a searcher as any man of his day into
the philosophy of the ancients. He bitterly condemns the un¬
certainties and vanities of the imperfect arts and sciences of the
time, but, in spite of his superstitious beliefs, he was a man of
real erudition.

Toward the close of his life he took up his residence at Ghent,
and shortly afterward went to Brussels, where he was arrested
for debt. His plain speaking in his last book made enemies of
his most powerful friends, and exposed him to the vengeance
of offended priests and courtiers. He died at the age of forty-
nine in France while on his way to Lyons to publish some of his
works.

Contemporary with Agrippa was Philippus Theophrastus
Bombastus von Hohenheim, better known as Paracelsus, who
was born at Einsiedeln, in Switzerland, in 1493. He was the
son of a physician and as a youth evinced a love for the art of
medicine, and after spending some time at the University of
Basle he led a wandering life, travelling from country to
country gathering knowledge and experience. Working in
166

i66

PARACELSUS (1493-I541)
From a print by Gaywood

IVORY MORTAR AND PESTLE CARVED IN RELIEF WITH
A REPRESENTATION OF A LABORATORY
The retort is connected with a water-cooled condenser (see p. 115)
Italian, seventeenth century

167

ALCHEMISTS OF THE XVIth CENTURY

the mines of Sigismund Fugger, he acquired a knowledge of
metals and ores and studied the diseases of his fellow- workers.
He was gifted by nature with original talents, and saw from his
experience that the practice of medicine had degenerated to a
mere pretension and relied chiefly on purging, bleeding, and
emetics. He realized that Nature was the best healer and that
the best results could be achieved by natural methods. His
fame as a physician spread rapidly, and in 1527 he was
appointed Professor of Medicine at the University of Basle.

Although he became popular with his students he made
many enemies, chiefly on account of his derision of the doctrines
which had been practised since the time of Hippocrates. The
burning of the books of the Fathers of Medicine in the presence
of his students was typical of the man who declared that he had
more knowledge in his bald pate than was in all their writings,
and that in the buckles of his shoes there was more learning than
in Galen and Avicenna, and in his beard more experience than
in all their universities. Though he was undoubtedly con¬
ceited and egotistic, he was loved and respected by his pupils,
who called him their “ dear preceptor and king of arts.” Driven
at length out of Basle by the jealousy of his rivals, he turned his
attention to alchemy and sought to study the art under Trithe-
mius, the Abbot of Spannheim. It was from about this time
that he took the name of Paracelsus (‘ Greater than Celsus ’ x), or,
as he later styled himself, Theophrastus Paracelsus, “Prince of
Philosophy and Medicine.” It is his work in alchemy which
chiefly concerns us, for through his labours the school of iatro-
chemistry was founded, and new paths for chemistry and
medicine were opened up which gave an impulse to the study
of medical chemistry that continued down to the beginning of
the nineteenth century.

I atro- chemistry had for its aim the investigation of chemicals
used in medicine and the investigation of their composition and

1 Aulus Cornelius Celsus was a Roman of the first century a.d. whose
writings on medicine and surgery are still held in honour.

167

LURE S? ROMANCE OF ALCHEMY

action. Paracelsus taught that the object of alchemy was not to
make gold, but to prepare medicines. The alchemist was to
discover the medicines and prepare them, while the physician
was to examine and explain their action. He believed that the
human body was a combination of certain chemical matters;
should these undergo changes, diseases resulted, to cure which

APPARATUS FOR TRANSMUTATION DESCRIBED BY PARACELSUS
From woodcuts of the sixteenth century

chemical medicines were necessary. He thus discarded all the
principles that had been for centuries the basis of the art of
medicine.

He attributed disease to a disproportion in the body between
the quantities of the three great principles — sulphur, mercury,
and salt — which he regarded as constituting all things. He con¬
sidered that an excess of sulphur was the cause of fever, and
contended that if illnesses were caused by chemical changes in
the body they could only be cured by chemical substances.

He thus threw over all the old theories that had influenced
1 68

ALCHEMISTS OF THE XVIth CENTURY

the art of medicine from the time of Galen. He set out to
fight against the ancient doctrines of the Fathers of Medicine
with courage and vigour, but his views were received with
opprobrium, and he was deemed by the orthodox professors a
“bombastic charlatan.” In replying to some of his opponents
he thus compared the alchemists with the physicians. The
former, he says,

are not given to idleness, nor do they go about in a proud habit
or plush and velvet garments, often showing their rings upon their
fingers or wearing swords with silver hilts by their sides or fine
and gay gloves upon their hands, but diligently follow their
labours, sweating whole days and nights by their furnaces. They
do not spend their time abroad for recreation, but take delight in
their laboratories. They wear leather garments with a pouch and
an apron wherewith to wipe their hands. They put their fingers
amongst the coals into clay and filth, not into gold rings. They
are sooty and black, like smiths and colliers, and do not pride
themselves upon clean and beautiful faces.

Paracelsus had the courage of his convictions and boldly pre¬
scribed arsenic, antimony, and mercury in the treatment of cer¬
tain diseases. He used almond-oil as a solvent for the essential
oils he extracted from certain drugs, and knew the value of
alcohol as a solvent for the properties of vegetable bodies.
“There is no better way,” he states, “of extracting the essence
of roots and herbs than to cut them up as small as possible and
boil them in strong wine in a closed vessel, separate them by
straining and distil the liquid through an alembic.”

Judging from his works, he appears to have been familiar
with nearly every chemical preparation known in his time ; he
held that chemistry was indispensable to medicine and an
essential part of medical education. He laboured for years to
discover some method of prolonging human life, for he fully
believed that the human body could be rejuvenated. “Metals
may be preserved from rust,” he observes,

wood may be protected from rot, blood may be preserved a long
time if the air is excluded; Egyptian mummies have kept their

169

LURE & ROMANCE OF ALCHEMY

form for centuries without undergoing putrefaction; animals
awaken from their winter sleep, and flies, having become torpid
from cold, become nimble again when they are warmed ; therefore
if inanimate objects can be kept from destruction, why should
there be no possibility to preserve the life-essence of animate
forms ?

He foreshadowed the discovery of alkaloids and other active
principles of plants. “There is,” he remarks, “ a force of virtue
shut up within things, a spirit like the spirit of life, in medicine
called Quintessence or the spirit of the thing.” He also be¬
lieved that there were certain specifics in the treatment of dis¬
ease. Thus his specific for causing sleep consisted of opium with
orange and lemon-juice flavoured with cinnamon and cloves.
He distinguished between the purgative action of vegetable
drugs like rhubarb and colocynth and the salines such as
potassium and sodium sulphate. His purgative specific was
chiefly composed of colocynth, and his diaphoretic contained
camphor, cardamoms, pepper, and grains of paradise, from
which it will be noticed that the active drug in each of these
preparations had an undoubted specific action.

“If good sometimes turns to evil, then it is possible to make
evil things good,” he observes in one of his treatises.

A substance may be poisonous, yet so employed that it will not
act as a poison. For example, arsenic is the most poisonous of
substances and a drachm of it will kill a horse, but fire it with salt
of nitre and it is no longer a poison ; a horse may then swallow ten
pounds without harm.

He claimed that the function of medicine was to supplement
Nature, and said, “ God makes the true physician, but not with¬
out pains on man’s part.”

In spite of his critics and traducers, Paracelsus was a
man of genius and a real seeker after truth; a careful study
of the voluminous works attributed to him compels the
student to form a high estimate of his great knowledge and
character.

170

ALCHEMISTS OF THE XVIth CENTURY

Like many other reformers, he ended his days in poverty. He
drifted from place to place, and at length, on the invitation of
the Archbishop, he went to Salzburg, where he died at the age
of forty-eight. He is buried in the cloisters of the ancient
church of St Sebastian in that city, and a stone set in the wall
bears the following inscription:

PHILIPPI THEOPHRASTI PARACELSI

QUI TANTUM ORBIS FAMAM EX AURO CHYMICO ADEPTUS

EST EFFIGIES ET OSSA

DONEC RURSUS CIRCUMDABITUR PELLE SUA.

Job ch. xix

SUB REPARATIONE ECCLESIA
MDCCLXXII

EX SEPULCHRALI TABE ERUTA
HEIC LOCATA SUNT.

CONDITUR HIC PHILIPPUS
THEOPHRASTUS INSIGNIS
MEDICINE DOCTOR. QUI
DIRA ILLA VULNERA. LEPRAM
PODAGRAM HYDROPOSIM
ALIAQ INSANABILIA COR¬
PORIS CONTAGIA. MIRIFICA
ARTE SUSTULIT. AC BONA
SUA IN PAUPERES DISTRI-
BUENDA COLLOCANDAQ
HONERAVIT. ANNO M.D
XXXXI DIE XXIIII. SEPTE-
MBRIS VITAM CUM MORTE
MUTAVIT.

PAX VIVIS REQUIES
AETERNA SEPULTIS.

LURE & ROMANCE OF ALCHEMY

Paracelsus’ ring and autograph are preserved with other relics
in the museum of the beautiful city in which he ended his days.
His fame as a healer still survives in the district, and on the
anniversary of his death sick people still make pilgrimages to
his tomb in the hope of obtaining relief from their sufferings.

REPUTED AUTOGRAPH OF PARACELSUS
From a manuscript preserved at Salzburg

The works of Johann Isaac Hollandus and his son, printed
in 1572 and subsequent years, appear to have been largely
taken from the treatises attributed to Paracelsus. Nothing is
known of their lives, and it is considered that their works, if
authentic, were written after his time. Boerhaave says they
were natives of Stolk, and Schmieder gives reasons for believing
that they lived in the early fifteenth century. The writings
which pass under their authorship are commended by Boer¬
haave, who says that Isaac was skilful in enamelling and in
imitating precious stones.

In considering the advance of alchemy in the sixteenth cen¬
tury the work of Georg Agricola, or Bauer, who was born at
Glauchau, in Saxony, in 1490, should not be forgotten. He
devoted his energies mostly to metallurgy, and describes his
researches in a work entitled De Re Metallica, printed in 1556.
He describes bismuth, distinguishing it from tin and lead, and
gives a clear account of the amalgamation process for the ex¬
traction of gold. He indicates the possibility of flame-tests by
noticing the characteristic colours of certain metals when heated
in a flame.

Another alchemist who contributed to the knowledge of the
time was Andreas Libavius, who was born at Halle in 1540.
He first studied medicine and practised as a physician, but,
having accepted the iatro-chemical theory, turned his attention
172

ALCHEMISTS OF THE XVIth CENTURY

to the discoveries of mineral bodies that might he employed in
medicine. His work entitled Alchymia dispersis passim optim-
orum auctorum veterum et recentium exemplis potissimum is re¬
garded by some as the first text-book on chemistry. He was
the first to make the chloride of tin still known as spiritus fumans
Libavii , and his name is thus perpetuated.

173