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This wonderful man was succeeded at the end of the same century by Arnoldus de Villa Nova, a Frenchman, or as others assert, a Spaniard, who deserves to be noticed on this occasion, as being the first to recommend the distilled spirit of wine, impregnated with certain herbs, as a valuable remedy; from which we may date the introduction of Tinctures into medical practice; for, although Thaddæus, a Florentine, who died in 1270, at the age of eighty, bestows great commendation upon the virtues of Spirit of Wine, yet he never used it as a solvent for active vegetable matter.

It was not however until the end of the thirteenth century, that Chemistry can be said to have added any considerable power to the arm of Physic.

Basil Valentine, a German Benedictine monk, led the way to the internal administration of metallic medicine, by a variety of experiments on the nature of Antimony, and in his “Currus Triumphalis Antimonii,” a work written in high Dutch, he has described a number of the combinations of that metal. If however we may credit a vague tradition, he was extremely unfortunate in his first experiments upon his brother monks, all of whom he injured if not killed; those who have keen ears for etymological sounds will instantly recognise, in this circumstance, the origin of the word Antimony,—ἁντί Μονοχους.