Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: The first history of chemistry / by John Ferguson. Source: Wellcome Collection.
Provider: This material has been provided by The Royal College of Surgeons of England. The original may be consulted at The Royal College of Surgeons of England.
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![§ 8. As to Vallensis' revision o£ the second edition there is no doubt, for the title gives full details. It is as follows:— Morieni | Romani, Qvondam | Eremitae Hierosolymitani, De | re Metallica, Metallorum transmutatione, | & occulta summaq; antiquorum medicina | Libellus, prater priore editionem accurate | recognitus. | Item, Nunc primum in Lucem prodit | Bernardi Treuirensis Responsio ad Thoma | de Bononia Caroli Regis octaui medicum | de Mineralibus, & Elixiris seu pulueris phi | losoplrici compositione, qua? pars est secre | tioris phisicffi, scholiis aliquot per Roberta | Vallensem Rugl. Illustrata. | Ad calcem adduntur | Tabula? breues ab eodem R. Vallensi conscripts? qua? antiquortl | intentionem de pulueris philosopbici compositione, abstrusis eorum | scriptis & Eenigmatibus inuolutam, declarant | Cum Indice copiosissimo. | Parisiis, | Apud Gulielmum Guillard, via Iacobea sub | D. Barbare signo. | M.D.LXIIII | It is a small 4to, ff. [2] 66 [4]. In the prefatory note of Vallensis to this edition, he states that Guillard, the printer, being desirous of bringing out a few tracts nepl xyfJ-etas, about chemistry, and especially that of Morienus, which had been already once printed by him, asked Vallensis if he could contribute anything from his collection that would throw light upon the puzzling passages in Morienus; whereupon he selected the Epistle of Bernard of Trevisan to Thomas of Bononia, edited it very carefully from a number of copies (presumably in manuscript), added a marginal commentary, and had it printed for the first time. From the way he speaks one would infer that Vallensis had supervised this second edition only, and not the first, but there is nothing sufficiently explicit to enable the question to be decided with certainty. His aim in taking this trouble was the good of those who wished to have trustworthy instruction in the art, and to escape from the wiles of sophists and impostors. For he does not doubt that in consequence of the frauds practised by self-styled chemists many considered the art altogether delusive or extremely difficult, and in its results most uncertain; whereas he says that in his little book, previously published, De veritate et antiquitate artis chemicce, he had collected the testimonies to its truth from the writings of distinguished theologians, jurists, physicians, and philosophers, and so he commends his labours to the true students of chemistry, with the hope that they will not fail to attain it, so profitable as it is to humanity, both for the making of gold and silver, and for preserving the body in health and warding off from it disease. Vallensis was undoubtedly a believer in the existence and virtues of the philosophical elixir, after which so many men ran for centuries.](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b22294193_0009.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
