Basil Valentine, meaning the valiant king, has assuredly an alchemical ring about it. It is exactly such a name as might be invented by one of the scientific fictionists of the middle ages. It is impossible, too, to read the "Triumphal Chariot," at least when suspicion has been awakened, without feeling that the character of the pious monk is a little overdone. A really devout monk would hardly be proclaiming his piety on every page with so much vehemence. Then there is the legend which accounts for the long lost manuscripts. It is explained that they were revealed to someone, unnamed, when a pillar in a church at Erfurt was struck and split open by lightning, the manuscripts having been buried in that pillar. When this happened is not recorded.
In Kopp's "Beitrage zur Geschichte der Chemie" the learned author argued that Thölde could only be regarded as an editor of Basil Valentine's works, because when they were published they gave so many new chemical facts and observations that it was impossible to think that Thölde would have denied himself the credit of the discoveries if they had been his in fact. That book was published in 1875. In "Die Alchemie," which Kopp published in 1886, he refers to Basil Valentine, and says that there is reason to think that the works attributed to him were an intentional literary deception perpetrated by Thölde.
Paracelsus: His Career.
No one man in history exercised such a revolutionary influence on medicine and pharmacy as the erratic genius Philipus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim. The name Paracelsus is believed to have been coined by himself, probably with the intention of
