The name and works of Basil Valentine are inseparably associated with
the medical use of antimony. His “Currus Triumphalis Antimonii” (the
Triumphal Chariot of Antimony) is stated in all text-books to have
been the earliest description of the virtues of this important remedy,
and of the forms in which it might be prescribed. And very wonderful
indeed is the chemical knowledge displayed in this and other of
Valentine’s writings.
[Illustration: BASIL VALENTINE.
(From the Collection of Etchings in the Royal Gallery, Munich.)]
Basil Valentine explains the process of fusing iron with this stibium
and obtaining thereby “by a particular manipulation a curious star
which the wise men before me called the signet star of philosophy.”
He commences the treatise already mentioned by explaining that he is
a monk of the Order of St. Benedict, which (I quote from an English
translation by Theodore Kirkringius, M.D., published at London in 1678)
“requires another manner of Spirit of Holiness than the common state
of mortals exercised in the profane business of this World.”
After thus introducing himself he proceeds to mingle chemistry, piety,
and abuse of the physicians and apothecaries of his day with much
repetition though with considerable shrewdness for about fifty pages.
At last, after many false starts, he expounds the origin and nature of
antimony, thus:--
“Antimony is a mineral made of the vapour of the Earth changed into
water, which spiritual syderal Transmutation is the true Astrum of
Antimony; which water, by the stars first, afterwards by the Element
of Fire which resides in the Element of Air, is extracted from the
Elementary Earth, and by coagulation formally changed into a tangible
essence, in which tangible essence is found very much of Sulphur
predominating, of Mercury not so much, and of Salt the least of the
three. Yet it assumes so much Salt as it thence acquires an hard and
unmalleable Mass. The principal quality of it is dry and hot, or rather
burning; of cold and humidity it hath very little in it, as there is in
common Mercury; in corporal Gold also is more heat than cold. These may
suffice to be spoken of the matter, and three fundamental principles of
Antimony, how by the Archeus in the Element of Earth it is brought to
perfection.”
It needs some practice in reading alchemical writings to make out
the drift of this rhapsody, and no profit would be gained by a clear
interpretation of the mysticism. It may, however, be noted that the
Archeus was a sort of friendly demon who worked at the formation of
metals in the bowels of the earth; that all metals were supposed to
be compounds of sulphur, mercury, and salt in varying proportions,
the sulphur and the salt, however, being refined spiritual essences
of the substances we know by these names; and that it was a necessary
compliment to pay to any product which it was intended to honour to
trace its ancestry to the four elements.
As the author goes on to deal with the various compounds or derivatives
from antimony, it is abundantly clear that he writes from practical
experience. He describes the Regulus of Antimony (the metal), the glass
(an oxy-sulphide), a tincture made from the glass, an oil, an elixir,
the flowers, the liver, the white calx, a balsam, and others.
Basil Valentine’s scathing contempt for contemporary medical
practitioners calls for quotation. “The doctor,” he says, “knows not
what medicines he prescribes to the sick; whether the colour of them be
white, black, grey, or blew, he cannot tell; nor doth this wretched man
know whether the medicament he gives be dry or hot, cold or humid....
Their furnaces stand in the Apothecaries’ shops to which they seldom
or never come. A paper scroll in which their usual Recipe is written
serves their purpose to the full, which Bill being by some Apothecary’s
boy or servant received, he with great noise thumps out of his mortar
every medicine, and all the health of the sick.”
Valentine concludes his “Triumphal Chariot” by thus apostrophising
contemporary practitioners:--“Ah, you poor miserable people, physicians
without experience, pretended teachers who write long prescriptions on
large sheets of paper; you apothecaries with your vast marmites, as
large as may be seen in the kitchens of great lords where they feed
hundreds of people; all you so very blind, rub your eyes and refresh
your sight that you may be cured of your blindness.”
In the same treatise Basil Valentine describes spirit of salt which he
had obtained by the action of oil of vitriol on marine salt; brandy,
distilled from wine; and how to get copper from pyrites by first
obtaining a sulphate, then precipitating the metal by plunging into the
solution a blade of iron. This operation was a favourite evidence with
later alchemists of the transmutation of iron into copper.
According to some of his biographers Basil Valentine was born in
1393; others are judiciously vague and variously suggest the twelfth,
thirteenth, or fourteenth century. That he was a Benedictine monk, he
tells us himself, and several monasteries of the order have been named
where he is supposed to have lived and laboured.
Many medical historians have doubted whether such a person as Basil
Valentine ever existed. His writings are said to have been circulated
in manuscript, but no one has ever pretended to have seen one of those
manuscripts, and the earliest known edition of any of Basil Valentine’s
works was published about 1601, by Johann Thölde, a chemist, and part
owner of salt works at Frankenhausen in Thuringia. It is rather a large
claim on our credulity, or incredulity, to assume that Thölde was
himself the author of the works attributed to the old monk, and that
he devised the entire fiction of the alleged discoveries, chemistry
and all. It was not an uncommon thing among the alchemists and other
writers of the middle ages to represent their books as the works of
someone of acknowledged fame, just as the more ancient theologians were
wont to credit one of the apostles or venerated fathers with their
inventions. But it was not common for a discoverer to hide himself
behind a fictitious sage whose existence he had himself invented. This
theory is, however, held by some chemical critics.
It is certain that the real Basil Valentine could not have been so
ancient as he was generally believed to be. Syphilis is referred to in
the “Triumphal Chariot” as the new malady of soldiers (Neue Krankheit
der Kriegsleute), as morbus Gallicus, and lues Gallica. It was not
known by these names until the invasion of Naples by the French in
1495. Another allusion in the same treatise is to the use of antimony
in the manufacture of type metal, which was certainly not adopted at
any time at which Basil Valentine could have lived. Another reason
for questioning his actual existence is that the most diligent search
has failed to discover his name either on the provincial list or on
the general roll of the Benedictine monks preserved in the archives
of the order at Rome. Boerhaave asserted that the Benedictines had
no monastery at Erfurt, which was generally assigned as the home of
Valentine.
A curious item of evidence bearing on the allegation that Thölde was
the fabricator of Basil Valentine’s works, or at least of part of
them, has been indicated by Dr. Ferguson, of Glasgow, in his notes on
Dr. Young’s collection of alchemical works. Thölde, it appears, had
written a book in his own name entitled “Haliographia.” This is divided
into four sections, namely: 1. Various kinds of Salts. 2. Extraction
of Salts. 3. Salt Springs. 4. Salts obtained from metals, minerals,
animals, and vegetables. This Part 4 of the work was subsequently
published by Thölde among Basil Valentine’s writings. One of two things
therefore is obvious. Either Thölde adopted a work by Valentine and
issued it as his own, or one at least of the pieces alleged to have
been by Valentine was really by Thölde.
Basil Valentine, meaning the valiant king, has assuredly an alchemical
ring about it. It is exactly such a name as might be invented by one
of the scientific fictionists of the middle ages. It is impossible,
too, to read the “Triumphal Chariot,” at least when suspicion has been
awakened, without feeling that the character of the pious monk is a
little overdone. A really devout monk would hardly be proclaiming his
piety on every page with so much vehemence. Then there is the legend
which accounts for the long lost manuscripts. It is explained that they
were revealed to someone, unnamed, when a pillar in a church at Erfurt
was struck and split open by lightning, the manuscripts having been
buried in that pillar. When this happened is not recorded.
In Kopp’s “Beitrage zur Geschichte der Chemie” the learned author
argued that Thölde could only be regarded as an editor of Basil
Valentine’s works, because when they were published they gave so many
new chemical facts and observations that it was impossible to think
that Thölde would have denied himself the credit of the discoveries if
they had been his in fact. That book was published in 1875. In “Die
Alchemie,” which Kopp published in 1886, he refers to Basil Valentine,
and says that there is reason to think that the works attributed to him
were an intentional literary deception perpetrated by Thölde.