ABSTRACT
Should any uninstructed person who might chance upon the Triumphal Chariot of Antimony, under the name of Basil Valentine, undertake to read that work, he would be mystified by much of its contents, by its references to a Spagyric Art, to the Grand Magisterium, the Universal Medicine, the Tinctures which transmute metals and other mysteries which constitute the alchemical Sacramentum Regis. But if he were asked what he thought of Basil Valentine in his historical and personal character, it is unlikely that he would prove conscious of a certain romantic veil encompassing the life of the man. He would take him on the faith of his own record and would answer that he was a pious monk, uncommonly well versed for his period in several departments of experimental and medical chemistry, but otherwise a bizarre speculator in the cloudy borderland of physical science, when all science was in its cradle. Now, it happens that there are those still among us—whether they count or not—who would maintain that such a person was mistaken in his estimate of Valentine the alchemist, not to speak of Valentine the investigator of antimonial therapeutics; and to this it must be added on my own part that he is in no better position as regards the man, for it is not possible to determine what personality was concealed under the pretence of a monastic garb and under the bene ṣonans but assuredly fictitious name.
