Chemical Lexicon

...work, you had instituted the most skilled of your colleagues as overseers (if I may use your words), so that medicines might be compounded the more cautiously, the more effective they are; the more diligently, the more difficult they are; and the more sincerely, the more precious they are: I could not help but strive, with all my strength, not only to exhibit a testimony of my gratitude toward you, but also to render to you and to the public some account (though I confess it is meager) of my stewardship. To perform this work (conscious of the scantiness of my own talent), I have called to my assistance men most skilled in the medical art and in Chemistry alchemy: Basilius Valentinus Basil Valentine, the teacher of Paracelsus, Theophrastus Paracelsus, Martin Ruland, Johannes Rhenanus (whose Chemical definitions even Ruland himself used), Gerard Dorn, Michael Toxites, Johannes Baptista Van Helmont, and others of the same order and learning. From their full harvests, according to my own slight judgment, I have—