Page:Chronicles of pharmacy (Volume 1).djvu/280

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sell nor publish. It was that of the Alkahest, or universal solvent. To make this known might, he feared, "encourage the luxury, pride, and godlessness of poor humanity."

Oliver Cromwell wrote in an old volume of Glauber's Alchemy: "This Glauber is an errant knave. I doe bethinke me he speaketh of wonders which cannot be accomplished; but it is lawful for man too the endeavour."

Glauber complained that he was not appreciated, which was probably true. "I grieve over the ignorance of my contemporaries," he wrote, "and the ingratitude of men. Men are always envious, wicked, ungrateful. For myself, faithful to the maxim, Ora et Labora, I fulfil my career, do what I can, and await my reward." Elsewhere he writes, "If I have not done all the good in the world that I should have desired, it has been the perversity of men that has hindered me." His employees, he says, were unfaithful. Having learned his processes, they became inflated with pride, and left him. Apparently there was a good business to be done in chemical secrets at that time. But Glauber did not give away all he knew, and he found it best to do all his important work himself. "I have learnt by expensive experience," he wrote, "the truth of the proverb, 'Wer seine Sachen will gethan haben recht, Muss selbsten seyn Herr und Knecht.'"

Although all Glauber's books appeared with Latin titles they were written in German.


Goulard.

Thomas Goulard was a surgeon of Montpellier with rather more than a local reputation. He was counsellor