It has never been pretended, so far as I am aware, that the Rosicrucian
mystics of the middle ages did anything for the advancement of
pharmacy. They are only mentioned here because they claimed the power
of curing disease, and also because it happens that the fiction
which created the legends concerning them was almost contemporaneous
with the not unsimilar one (if the latter be a fiction) which made a
historical figure of Basil Valentine. Between 1614 and 1616 three works
were published professing to reveal the history of the brethren of
the Rosy Cross. The first was known as Fama Fraternitatis, the second
was the Confessio Fraternitatis, and the third and most important was
the “Chymical Marriage of Christian Rosencreutz.” The treatises are
written in a mystic jargon, and have been interpreted as alchemical
or religious parables, though vast numbers of learned men adopted
the records as statements of facts. It was asserted that Christian
Rosencreutz, a German, born in 1378, had travelled in the East, and
from the wise men of Arabia and other countries had learnt the secrets
of their knowledge, religious, necromantic, and alchemical. On his
return to Germany he and seven other persons formed this fraternity,
which was to be kept secret for a hundred years. The brethren, it
is suggested, communicated to each other their discoveries and the
knowledge which had been transmitted to them to communicate with
each other. They were to treat the sick poor free, were to wear no
distinctive dress, but they used the letters C.R. They knew how to
make gold, but this was not of much value to them, for they did not
seek wealth. They were to meet once a year, and each one appointed his
own successor, but there were to be no tombstones or other memorials.
Christian Rosencreutz himself is reported to have died at the age of
106, and long afterwards his skeleton was found in a house, a wall
having been built over him. Their chief business being to heal the
sick poor, they must have known much about medicine, but the books do
not reveal anything of any use. They acquired their knowledge, not by
study, but by the direct illumination of God. The theories--such as
they were--were Paracelsian, and the fraternity, though mystic, was
Protestant.
The most curious feature of the story is that the almost obviously
fictitious character of the documents which announced it should have
been so widely believed. Very soon after their publication German
students were fiercely disputing concerning the authenticity of the
revelations, and the controversy continued for two hundred years. Much
learned investigation into the origin of the first treatises has been
made, and the most usual conclusion has been that they were written by
a German theologian, Johann Valentin Andreas, of Württemberg, b. 1586,
d. 1654. He is said to have declared before his death that he wrote the
alleged history expressly as a work of fiction.