recognition of the fact now that he deserves also the title of the
Founder of Pharmaceutical Chemistry, not only because of the value of
the observations contained in his writings, but also because of the fact
that they proved so suggestive to certain scientific geniuses during the
century succeeding Valentine's life. Almost more than to have added to
the precious heritage of knowledge for mankind, it is a boon for a
scientific observer to have awakened the spirit of observation in
others, and to be the founder of a new school of thought. This Basil
Valentine undoubtedly did, and, in the Renaissance, the incentive from
his writings for such men as Paracelsus is easy to appreciate.

Besides, his work furnishes evidence that the investigating spirit was
abroad just when it is usually supposed not to have been, for the
Thuringian monk surely did not do all his investigation alone, but must
have owed, as well as given, many a suggestion to his contemporaries.

Some ten years ago, when Sir Michael Foster, professor of physiology in
the University of Cambridge, England, was invited to deliver the Lane
Lectures at the Cooper Medical College in San Francisco, he took for his
subject "The History of Physiology." In the course of his lecture on
"The Rise of Chemical Physiology" he began with the name of Basil
Valentine, who first attracted men's attention to the many chemical
substances around them that might be used in the treatment of disease,
and said of him:

"He was one of the alchemists, but in addition to his
inquiries into the properties of metals and his search for the
philosopher's stone, he busied himself with the nature of
drugs, vegetable and mineral, and with their action as
remedies for disease. He was no anatomist, no physiologist,
but rather what nowadays we should call a pharmacologist. He
did not care for the problem of the body, all he sought to
understand was how the constituents of the soil and of plants
might be treated so as to be available for healing the sick
and how they produced their effects. We apparently owe to him
the introduction of many chemical substances, for instance of
hydrochloric acid, which he prepared from oil and vitriol of
salt, and of many vegetable drugs. And he was apparently the
author of certain conceptions which, as we shall see, played
an important part in the development of chemistry and of
physi