Page:Chronicles of pharmacy (Volume 1).djvu/241

 be prescribed. And very wonderful indeed is the chemical knowledge displayed in this and other of Valentine's writings.

(From the Collection of Etchings in the Royal Gallery, Munich.)

Basil Valentine explains the process of fusing iron with this stibium and obtaining thereby "by a particular manipulation a curious star which the wise men before me called the signet star of philosophy." He commences the treatise already mentioned by explaining that he is a monk of the Order of St. Benedict, which (I quote from an English translation by Theodore Kirkringius, M.D., published at London in 1678) "requires another manner of Spirit of Holiness