I, Basil Valentine, by Religious Vows am bound to live
according to the order of St. Benedict and that requires
another manner of Spirit of Holiness than the common state of
Mortals exercised in the profane business of this World; I
thought it my duty before all things, in the beginning of this
little book, to declare what is necessary to be known by the
pious Spagyrist [old-time name for medical chemist], inflamed
with an ardent desire of this Art, as what he ought to do, and
whereunto to direct his striving, that he may lay such
foundations of the whole matter as may be stable; lest his
Building, shaken with the Winds, happen to fall, and the whole
Edifice to be involved in shameful Ruine which otherwise being
founded on more firm and solid principles, might have
continued for a long series of time. Which Admonition I judged
was, is and always will be a necessary part of my religious
Office; especially since we must all die, and no one of us
which are now, whether high or low, shall long be seen among
the number of men. For it concerns me to recommend these
Meditations of Mortality to Posterity, leaving them behind me,
not only that honor may be given to the Divine Majesty, but
also that men may obey him sincerely in all things.
"In this my meditation I found that there were five principal
heads, chiefly to be considered by the wise and prudent
spectators of our Wisdom and Art. The first of which is
Invocation of God. The second, Contemplation of Nature. The
third, True Preparation. The fourth, the Way of Using. The
fifth, Utility and Fruit. For he who regards not these, shall
never obtain place among true Chymists, or fill up the number
of perfect Spagyrists. Therefore, touching these five heads,
we shall here following treat and so far declare them, as that
the general Work may be brought to light and perfected by an
intent and studious Operator."
This book, though the title might seem to indicate it, is not devoted
entirely to the study of antimony, but contains many important additions
to the chemistry of the time. For instance, Basil Valentine explains in
this work how what he calls the spirit of salt might be obtained. He
succeeded in manufacturing this material by treating common salt with
oil of vitriol and heat. From the description of the uses to which he
put the end product of his chemical manipulation, it is evident that
under the name of spirit of salt he is describing what we now know as
hydrochloric acid. This is said to be the first definite mention of it
in the history of science, and the method suggested for its preparation
is not very different from that employed even at the present time. He
also suggests in his volume how alcohol may be obtained in high
strengths. He distilled the spirit obtained from wine over carbonate of
potassium, and thus succeeded in depriving it of a great proportion of
its water. We have said that he was deeply interested in the
philosopher's stone. Naturally this turned his attention to the study of
metals, and so it is not surprising to find that he succeeded in
formulating a method by which metallic copper could be obtained. The
material used for the purpose was copper pyrites, which was changed to
an impure sulphate of copper by the action of oil of vitriol and moist
air. The sulphate of copper occurred in solution, and the copper could
be precipitated from it by plunging an iron bar into it. Basil Valentine
recognized the presence of this peculiar yellow metal, and studied some
of its qualities. He does not seem to have been quite sure, however,
whether the phenomenon that he witnessed was not really a transmutation
of at least some of the iron into copper as a consequence of the other
chemicals present. There are some observations on chemical physiology,
and especially with regard to respiration, in the book on antimony which
show their author to have anticipated the true explanation of the theory
of respiration. He states that animals breathe because air is needed to
support their life, and that all the animals exhibit the phenomenon of
respiration. He even insists that the fishes, though living in water,
breathe air, and he adduces in support of this idea the fact that
whenever a river is entirely frozen the fishes die. The reason for this
being, according to this old-time physiological chemist, not that the
fishes are frozen to death, but that they are not able to obtain air in
the ice as they did in the water, and consequently perish.
There are many testimonials to the practical character of all his
knowledge and his desire to apply it for the benefit of humanity. The
old monk could not repress the expression of his impatience with
physicians who gave to patients for "diseases of which they knew little,
remedies of which they knew less." For him it was an unpardonable sin
for a physician not to have faithfully studied the various mixtures
that he prescribed for his patients, and not to know not only their
appearance and taste and effect, but also the limits of their
application. Considering that at the present time it is a frequent
source of complaint that physicians often prescribe remedies with even
whose physical appearance they are not familiar and whose composition is
often quite unknown to them, this complaint of the old-time chemist
alchemist will be all the more interesting for the modern physician. It
is evident that when Basil Valentine allows his ire to get the better of
him it is because of his indignation over the quacks who were abusing
medicine and patients in his time, as they have ever since. There is a
curious bit of aspersion on mere book learning in the passage that has a
distinctly modern ring, and one feels the truth of Russell Lowell's
expression that to read a classic, no matter how antique, is like
reading a commentary on the morning paper, so up-to-date does genius
ever remain:
"And whensoever I shall have occasion to contend in the School
with such a Doctor, who knows not how himself to prepare his
own medicines, but commits that business to another, I am sure
I shall obtain the Palm from him; For indeed that good man
knows not what medicines he prescribes to the sick; whether
the color of them be white, black, gray, or blew (_sic_), he
cannot tell; nor doth this wretched man know whether the
medicine he gives be dry or hot, cold or humid; but he only
knows that he found it so written in his books, and then
pretends to knowledge or as it were Possession by Prescription
of a very long time; yet he desires to further information.
Here again let it be lawful to exclaim, Good God, to what a
state is the matter brought! what Goodness of Minde is in
these men! what care do they take of the sick! Wo, wo to them!
in the day of Judgement they will find the fruit of their
Ignorance and Rashness, then they will see him whom they
pierced, when they neglected their Neighbor, sought after
money and nothing else; whereas were they cordial in their
profession, they would spend Nights and Days in Labour that
they might become more learned in their Art, whence more
certain health would accrew to the sick with their estimation
and greater glory to themselves. But since Labour is tedious
to them they commit the matter to chance, and being secure of
their Honour, and content with their Fame, they (like
Brawlers) defend themselves with a certain garrulity, without
any respect had to Confidence or Truth."
Perhaps one of the reasons why Valentine's book has been of such
enduring interest is that it is written in an eminently human vein and
out of a lively imagination. It is full of figures relating to many
other things besides chemistry, which serve to show how deeply this
investigating observer was attentive to all the problems of life around
him. For instance, when he wants to describe the affinity that exists
between many substances in chemistry, and which makes it impossible for
them not to be attracted to one another, he takes a figure from the
attractions that he sees exist among men and women. It is curious to
find affinities discussed in our modern sense so long ago. There are
some paragraphs with regard to the influence of the passion of love that
one might think rather a quotation from an old-time sermon than from a
great ground-breaking book in the science of chemistry.
"Love leaves nothing entire or sound in man; it impedes his
sleep, he cannot rest either day or night; it takes off his
appetite that he hath no disposition either to meat or drink
by reason of the continual torments of his heart and mind. It
deprives him of all Providence, hence he neglects his affairs,
vocation, and business. He minds neither study, labor, nor
prayer; casts away all thoughts of anything but the body
beloved; this is his study, this his most vain occupation. If
to lovers the success be not answerable to their wish, or so
soon and prosperously as they desire, how many melancholies
henceforth arise, with griefs and sadness, with which they
pine away and wax so lean as they have scarcely any flesh
cleaving to the bones. Yea, at last they lose the life itself,
as may be proved by many examples! for such men (which is an
horrible thing to think of) slight and neglect all perils and
detriments, both of the body and life, and of the soul and
eternal salvation."
It is evident that human nature is not different in our sophisticated
twentieth century from that which this observant old monk saw around him
in the fifteenth. He continues:
"How many testimonies of this violence which is in love, are
daily found? for it not only inflames the younger sort, but it
so far exaggerates some persons far gone in years as through
the burning heat thereof, they are almost mad. Natural
diseases are for the most part governed by the complexion of
man and therefore invade some more fiercely, others more
gently; but Love, without distinction of poor or rich, young
or old, seizeth all, and having seized so blinds them as
forgetting all rules of reason, they neither see nor hear any
snare."
But then the old monk thinks that he has said enough about this rather
foreign subject, and apologizes for his digression in another paragraph
that should remove any lingering doubt there might be with regard to the
genuineness of his monastic character. At the end of the passage he
makes the application in a very few words. The personal element in his
confession is so naive and so simply straightforward that instead of
seeming to be the result of conceit, which would surely have repelled
the reader, it rather attracts and enhances his kindly feeling for its
author. The paragraph would remind one in certain ways of that personal
element that was to become more popular in literature after Montaigne in
the next century made it rather the fashion.
"But of these enough; for it becomes not a religious man to
insist too long upon these cogitations, or to give place to
such a flame in his heart. Hitherto (without boasting I speak
it) I have throughout the whole course of my life kept myself
safe and free from it, and I pray and invoke God to vouchsafe
me his Grace that I may keep holy and inviolate the faith
which I have sworn, and live contented with my spiritual
spouse, the Holy Catholick Church. For no other reason have I
alleged these than that I might express the love with which
all tinctures ought to be moved towards metals, if ever they
be admitted by them into true friendship, and by love, which
permeates the inmost parts, be converted into a better state."
The application of the figure at the end of his long digression is
characteristic of the period in which he wrote, as also to a
considerable extent of the German literary methods of the time.
In this volume on the use of antimony there are in most of the editions
certain biographical notes which have sometimes been accepted as
authentic, but oftener rejected. According to these, Basil Valentine was
born in a town in Alsace, on the southern bank of the Rhine. As a
consequence of this, there are several towns that have laid claim to
being his birthplace. M. Jean Reynaud, the distinguished French
philosophical writer of the first half of the nineteenth century, once
said that Basil Valentine, like Ossian and Homer, had many towns claim
him years after his death. He also suggested that, like those old poets,
it was possible that the writings sometimes attributed to Basil
Valentine were really the work not of one man, but of several
individuals. There are, however, many objections to this theory, the
most forcible of which is the internal evidence derived from the books
themselves showing similarities of style and method of treating subjects
too great for us to admit non-identity in the writers. M. Reynaud lived
at a time when it was all the fashion to suggest that old works that had
come down to us, like the Iliad and the Odyssey, and even such national
epics as the Cid and the Arthur Legends and the Nibelungenlied were to
be attributed to several writers rather than to one. We have passed that
period of criticism, however, and have reverted to the idea of single
authorship for these works, and the same conclusion has been generally
come to with regard to the writings attributed to Basil Valentine.
Other biographic details contained in "The Triumphal Chariot of
Antimony" are undoubtedly more correct. According to them Basil
Valentine travelled in England and Holland on missions for his order,
and went through France and Spain on a pilgrimage to St. James of
Compostella.
Besides this work, there is a number of other books of Basil
Valentine's, printed during the first half of the sixteenth century,
that are well known and copies of which may be found in most of the
important libraries. The United States Surgeon General's Library at
Washington contains not a few of the works on medical subjects, and the
New York Academy of Medicine Library has some valuable editions of
certain of his works. Some of his other well-known books, each of which
is a good-sized octavo volume, bear the following descriptive titles (I
give them in English, though as they are usually found, they are in
Latin, sixteenth-century translations of the original German): "The
World in Miniature: or, The Mystery of the World and of Human Medical
Science," published at Mayburg, 1609; "The Chemical Apocalypse: or, The
Manifestation of Artificial Chemical Compounds," published in Erfurt in
1624; "A Chemico-Philosophic Treatise Concerning Things Natural and
Preternatural, Especially Relating to the Metals and the Minerals,"
published at Frankfurt in 1676; "Haliography: or, The Science of Salts:
A Treatise on the Preparation, Use, and Chemical Properties of All the
Mineral, Animal, and Vegetable Salts," published at Bologna in 1644;
"The Twelve Keys of Philosophy," Leipsic, 1630. These are of interest to
the chemist and physicist rather than to the physician, and it is as a
Maker of Medicine that we are concerned with Valentine here.
The great attention aroused in Basil Valentine's work at the
Renaissance period can be best realized from the number of manuscript
copies and their wide distribution. His books were not all printed at
one place, but, on the contrary, in different portions of Europe. The
original edition of "The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony" was published in
Leipsic in the early part of the sixteenth century. The first editions
of the other books, however, appeared at places so distant from Leipsic
as Amsterdam and Bologna, while various cities of Germany, as Erfurt and
Frankfurt, claim the original editions of still other works. Many of the
manuscript copies still exist in various libraries in Europe; and while
there is no doubt that some unimportant additions to the supposed works
of Basil Valentine have come from the attribution to him of scientific
treatises of other German writers, the style and the method of the
principal works mentioned is entirely too similar not to have been the
fruit of a single mind and that possessed of a distinct investigating
genius, setting it far above any of its contemporaries in scientific
speculation and observation.
The most interesting feature of all of Basil Valentine's writings that
are extant is the distinctive tendency to make his observations of
special practical utility. His studies in antimony were made mainly with
the idea of showing how that substance might be used in medicine. He did
not neglect to point out other possible uses, however, and knew the
secret of the employment of antimony in order to give sharpness and
definition to the impression produced by metal types. It would seem as
though he was the first scientist who discussed this subject, and there
is even some question of whether printers and typefounders did not
derive their ideas in this matter from our chemist.
Interested though he was in the transmutation of metals, he never failed
to try to find and suggest some medicinal use for all of the substances
that he investigated. His was no greedy search for gold and no
cumulation of investigations with the idea of benefiting only himself.
Mankind was always in his mind, and perhaps there is no better
demonstration of his fulfilment of the character of the monk than this
constant solicitude to benefit others by every bit of investigation that
he carried out. For him, with medieval nobleness of spirit, "the first
part of every work must be the invocation of God, and the last, though
no less important than the first, must be the utility and fruit for
mankind that can be derived from it."
The career of the last of the Makers of Medicine in the Middle Ages may
be summed up briefly in a few sentences that show how thoroughly this
old Benedictine was possessed of the spirit of modern science. He
believed in observation as the most important source of medical
knowledge. He valued clinical experience far above book information. He
insisted on personal acquaintanceship on the part of the physician with
the drugs he used, and thought nothing more unworthy of a practitioner
of medicine,--indeed he sets it down as almost criminal--than to give
remedies of whose composition he was not well aware and whose effect he
did not thoroughly understand. He thought that nature was the most
important aid to the physician, much more important than drugs, though
he was the first to realize the significance of chemical affinities, and
he seems to have understood rather well how individual often were the
effects obtained from drugs. He was a patient student, a faithful
observer, a writer who did not begrudge time and care to the composition
of large books on medicine, yet withal he was no dry-as-dust scholar,
but eminently human in his sympathies with ailing humanity, and a
strenuous upholder of the dignity of the profession to which he
belonged. Scarcely more can be said of anyone in the history of
medicine, at least so far as good intentions go; though many
accomplished more, none deserve more honor than the Thuringian monk whom
we know as Basil Valentine.
There are many other of these old-time Makers of Medicine of whom nearly
the same thing can be said. Basil Valentine is only one of a number of
men who worked faithfully and did much both for medical science and
professional life during the thousand years from the fall of Rome to the
fall of Constantinople, when, according to what used to be commonly
accepted opinion, men were not animated by the spirit of research and of
fine incentive to do good to men that we are so likely to think of as
belonging exclusively to more modern times. A man whom he greatly
influenced, Paracelsus, took up the tradition of scientific
investigation where Basil Valentine had left it. His work, though more
successfully revolutionary, was not done in such a fine spirit of
sympathy with humanity nor with that simplicity of life and purity of
intention that characterized the old monk's work. Paracelsus' birth in
the year of the discovery of America places him among the makers of the
foundations of our modern medicine, and he will be treated of in a
volume on "The Forefathers in Medicine."
APPENDIX I
ST. LUKE THE PHYSICIAN[32]
In the midst of what has been called the "higher criticism" of the Bible
in recent times, one of the long accepted traditions that has been most
strenuously assailed and, indeed, in the minds of many scholars, seemed,
for a time at least, quite discredited, was that St. Luke the
Evangelist, the author of the Third Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles,
was a physician. Distinguished authorities in early Christian
apologetics have declared that the pillars of primitive Christian
history are the genuine Epistles of St. Paul, the writings of St. Luke,
and the history of Eusebius. It is quite easy to understand, then, that
the attack upon the authenticity of the writings usually assigned to St.
Luke, which in many minds seemed successful, has been considered of
great importance. In the very recent time there has been a decided
reaction in this matter. This has come, not so much from Roman
Catholics, who have always clung to the traditional view, and whose
great Biblical students have been foremost in the support of the
previously accepted opinion, but from some of the most strenuous of the
German higher critics, who now appreciate that destructive, so-called
higher criticism went too far, and that the traditional view not only
can be maintained, but is the only opinion that will adequately respond
to all the new facts that have been found, and all the recently gathered
information with regard to the relations of events in the olden time.
By far the most important contribution to the discussion in recent
years came not long since from the pen of Professor Adolph Harnack, the
professor of church history in the University of Berlin. Professor
Harnack's name is usually cited as that of one of the most destructive
of the higher critics. His recent book, however, "Luke the
Physician,"[33] is an entire submission to the old-fashioned viewpoint
that the writer of the Third Gospel and of the Acts of the Apostles was
a Greek fellow-worker of St. Paul, who had been in company for years
with Mark and Philip and James, and who had previously been a physician,
and was evidently well versed in all the medical lore of that time.
Harnack does not merely concede the old position. As might be expected,
his rediscussion of the subject clinches the arguments for the
traditional view, and makes it impossible ever to call it in question
again. It is easy to understand how important are such admissions when
we recall how much this traditional view has been assailed, and how
those who have held it have been accused of old-fogyism and lack of
scholarship, and unwarranted clinging to antiquated notions just because
they thought they were of faith, and how, lacking in true scholarship,
seriously hampering genuine investigation, such conservatism has been
declared to be.
The question of Luke's having been a physician is an extremely valuable
one, and no one in our time is better fitted by early training and long
years of study to elucidate it than Professor Harnack. He began his
excursions into historical writing years ago, as I understand, as an
historian of early Christian medicine. Some of his works on medical
conditions just before and after Christ are quoted confidently by the
distinguished German medical historians. From this department he
graduated into the field of the higher criticism. He is eminently in a
position, therefore, to state the case with regard to St. Luke fully,
and to indicate absolutely the conclusions that should be drawn from the
premises of fact, writings, and traditions that we have. He does so in a
very striking way. Perhaps no better example of his thoroughly lucid and
eminently logical mode of argumentation is to be found than the
paragraph in which he states the question. It might well be recommended
as an example of terse forcefulness and logical sequence that deserves
the emulation of all those who want to write on medical subjects. If we
had more of these characteristic qualities of Harnack's style, our
medical literature, so called, would not need to occupy so many pages of
print as it does--yet would say more. Here it is: