shington contains not a few of the works on medical subjects, and the
New York Academy of Medicine Library has some valuable editions of
certain of his works. Some of his other well-known books, each of which
is a good-sized octavo volume, bear the following descriptive titles (I
give them in English, though as they are usually found, they are in
Latin, sixteenth-century translations of the original German): "The
World in Miniature: or, The Mystery of the World and of Human Medical
Science," published at Mayburg, 1609; "The Chemical Apocalypse: or, The
Manifestation of Artificial Chemical Compounds," published in Erfurt in
1624; "A Chemico-Philosophic Treatise Concerning Things Natural and
Preternatural, Especially Relating to the Metals and the Minerals,"
published at Frankfurt in 1676; "Haliography: or, The Science of Salts:
A Treatise on the Preparation, Use, and Chemical Properties of All the
Mineral, Animal, and Vegetable Salts," published at Bologna in 1644;
"The Twelve Keys of Philosophy," Leipsic, 1630. These are of interest to
the chemist and physicist rather than to the physician, and it is as a
Maker of Medicine that we are concerned with Valentine here.

The great attention aroused in Basil Valentine's work at the
Renaissance period can be best realized from the number of manuscript
copies and their wide distribution. His books were not all printed at
one place, but, on the contrary, in different portions of Europe. The
original edition of "The Triumphal Chariot of Antimony" was published in
Leipsic in the early part of the sixteenth century. The first editions
of the other books, however, appeared at places so distant from Leipsic
as Amsterdam and Bologna, while various cities of Germany, as Erfurt and
Frankfurt, claim the original editions of still other works. Many of the
manuscript copies still exist in various libraries in Europe; and while
there is no doubt that some unimportant additions to the supposed works
of Basil Valentine have come from the attribution to him of scientific
treatises of other German writers, the style and the method of the
principal works mentioned is entirely too similar not to have been the
fruit of a single mind and that possessed of a distinct investigating
genius, setting it far above any of its contemporaries in scientific
speculation and observation.

The most interesting feature of all of Basil Valentine's writings that
are extant is the distinctive tendency to make his o