The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony, xiii. 



wonderful ; it was far back in the early 

 seventeenth century that the doubt was 

 raised originally, and such investigations 

 as were possible have tended rather to 

 confirm than dispose of it. It is ad- 

 vanced that the monastic character 

 assumed by Basil Valentine was simply 

 a veil and an evasion to conceal his real 

 identity, and, further, that his name was 

 a pseudonym which was Hermetic and 

 allegorical in its significance. Maxi- 

 milian Stoel, the author of a handbook 

 of practical medicine, which is now most 

 readily accessible in its fourth edition, 

 adopted this view.* So also did 

 Boerhaave, the celebrated physician of 

 Leyden, whose proposed chronological 

 history of the alchemists has been a loss 

 yet to be repaired.t Jacobus Tollius 

 contrived to resolve the enigma of the 



* See La Medicine Pratique, forming the seventh 

 division of the Encyclopedie des Sciences Medicates, Paris, 

 1834, 8vo. 



t On this and other points consult Dallowe's translation 

 of Boerhaave's Elements of Chemistry, 2 vols., 1735? 4to ; 

 also Herman Boerhaave : His Academical Lectures on 

 Lues Venerea, translated, London, 1763, 8vo. 



