August 12, 189S.] 



SCIENCE. 



173 



Finally, he came across a mineral (doubtless 

 antimony) by the study of which he was 

 led to make a medicine which restored that 

 sick brother to perfect health, so that he 

 lived for a long time thereafter (dann er lebte 

 noch lange hernach). It was still later in 

 Basil's life that he became acquainted with 

 the matters in the treatiseon the Grosse Stein. 

 If the ' Zeitlange' after he became a monk 

 and before he began to study was one year ; 

 if the diligent study of many books on the 

 natures occupied two years ; if after his six 

 years' work in distillation he performed a 

 hundred operations in mineral chemistry, 

 each of which in his style of procedure 

 would take about two months on an aver- 

 age, so that he was occupied in this way 

 eight years ; if the long life after restoration 

 to health of that brother who had been ill 

 for at least fifteen years occupied ten years, 

 and if the interval between the writing of 

 the Grosse Stein and the more advanced and 

 certainly later Triumph-Wagen was three 

 years, we have a total of 30 years between 

 Ms entering the Benedictine order and his 

 writing the Triumph-Wagen. At this time 

 he was living in the monastery. When, 

 therefore, in the Triumph- Wagen he speaks 

 of having early in life made a voyage to 

 England, that must have been thirty years 

 or more previously. We shall see presently 

 the bearing of this calculation. 



The Triumph-Wagen contains more than 

 one indication from which to infer the age 

 of the author. It also, by the way, informs 

 us that he lived ' oberhalb Rheins,' that is, 

 in the Upper Eheingau, or, say, somewhere 

 south of and not very far from Mainz. The 

 author in the Triumph- Wagen, no less than 

 three times, speaks of the desirability of 

 economizing parchment. Now, it would 

 have been an unusual extravagance for a 

 man in the 15th century to write chemical 

 treatises on parchment. Certainly, if econ- 

 omy were any object, paper was easily pro- 

 cured. And, indeed, in Chapter III. of his 



earlier treatise On Natural and Supernatural 

 Things, he himself affords the quite super- 

 fluous testimony that in his time paper 

 mills abounded. He is always and every- 

 where recommending ' grobe Papier ' for 

 filters. Either, then, the talk about the 

 necessity of abridging his book in order to 

 economize parchment was inserted in order 

 to impart a medieval trait, or else the Tri- 

 umph-Wagen cannot possibly have been 

 written later than 1460 or 1470. 



Just as this indication of a date occurs 

 thrice, so there is another which is dragged 

 in by the head and shoulders no less than 

 seven times in the book. It is a refer- 

 ence to a certain disease as having recently 

 appeared which at the time of Tholde's 

 publication was generally supposed to have 

 made its first appearance in 1493. Were 

 these seven references inserted in order to 

 create a belief in the priority of the book 

 to Paracelsus, or was the book really writ- 

 ten when that disease was something new ? 



The name which Basil Valentine gives 

 to this disease is very suspicious. In Ger- 

 many in the 15th century it was commonly 

 called ' die wilde Wertzen ; ' * but it had 

 various other designations. Valentine, 

 however, uses none of these. Here are his 

 expressions : 



" Die neue unbekannte Krankheit so in 

 jetzigen Krieg-Ziigen in diese Lande ein- 

 gefiihret worden durch die Gallier." 



" Die neue Franzosen-Krankheit." 



" Die Franzosen." 



" Die Franzosen-Sucht." 



" Die neue Krankheit des Kriegs-Leute 

 in diesen Zeit." 



" Die neue Kriegs-Sucht." 



" Die Krankheit der Gallier neulich auf 

 uns geerbet." 



It is doubtful whether the malady was 

 brought to Germany from France or from 

 Naples. Trithemius, a contemporary Ger- 



* Froksck, Geschiehte des venerischen Krankhei- 

 ten, 1895. 



