Attempt at an Overview of Chemical Literature and its Branches

antimony original: "Spießglas" can certainly be considered a classic work. Too little is known about his birth and life circumstances for one to determine anything certain. This is why everyone who has described his life has provided only fragments. Some information is found in Geo. Wolfg. Wedel's program On Basilius Valentinus; see: Exercitat. medico-philolog. Cent. II. Decas I. Exerc. IX. p. 57. and in Fr. Rothscholtz's German Chemical Theater, Vol. I, page 669, and in Iust. Fr. Motschmann's Erfordia literaria, 3rd collection, Erfurt 1730. Some deny that he ever lived, including Morhof in his Epistle on the Transmutation of Metals, and Tollius, who considered his name to be a chemical cipher and wanted to prove that Basilius meant royal and Valendo was to be derived from Valere to be strong/healthy, though even this author gives him no insignificant praise. See Iac. Tollii Fortuita Critica, Amstel. 1687. 8vo. page 189. Stolle also asserts this in his Introduction to the History of Medical Scholarship, Jena 1737, page 590, note p., who was generally not a great patron of his. Kaestner says the same in his Medical Learned Lexicon, Jena 1740, page 875. Others, such as Wedel, wanted to claim that he was born in Alsace on the Rhine, which others contradicted, citing that he knew the venereal disease syphilis, which became known in 1470 and 1480. To refute them, it was said, partly that he had become very old, and partly that the venereal disease had been known even before the stated years. Usually, it is believed that he was a monk in the Benedictine monastery of St. Peter in Erfurt, as Gudenus seeks to confirm especially in hist. Erford L. 2. Cap. XX.