Christoph Gottlieb von Murr on the True Origin of the Rosicrucians and the Order of Freemasons: Together with an Appendix on the History of the Knights Templar

Leonhard Thurneisser zum Thurn (born in Basel 1530, died in Cologne 1596) was the most famous of all the admirers of Paracelsus, but he was a failed copy of the original, even though he lived where the latter had previously resided. *) He was more of an astrological swindler and empiric (lacking true scholarship) than an upright physician. **) It is very surprising how Reinefius ***) could highly esteem this fraudulent charlatan. At most, one can grant him some merit in botany, the knowledge of which he, like almost all of his medical science, owes primarily to the Basel physician Dr. Johann Huber.

*) It is now the famous Wilhelm Haaf type foundry.

**) Acta med. Berolinens. Medical Acts of Berlin Dec. II, Vol. I., and Dr. I. C. W. Möhfer’s contributions to the history of the sciences in the March of Brandenburg etc., Berlin 1783, large 4to, where Thurneisser’s life is recounted in detail on pp. 55—198.

***) Variar. Lect. Various Readings p. 664.