[79] It has since been discovered that all gases can be condensed, given a sufficient degree of cold and pressure.
=Francis Mercurius van Helmont= (see plate 12), the son of John Baptist, born in 1618, gained the reputation of having also achieved the _magnum opus_, since he appeared to live very luxuriously upon a limited income. He was a skilled chemist and physician, but held many queer theories, metempsychosis included.
§ =58.= =Johann Rudolf Glauber= was born at Karlstadt in 1604. Of his life little is known. He appears to have travelled about Germany a good deal, afterwards visiting Amsterdam, where he died in 1668. He was of a very patriotic nature, and a most ardent investigator in the realm of Chemistry. He accepted the main iatro-chemical doctrines, but gave most of his attention to applied Chemistry. He enriched the science with many important discoveries; and crystallised sodium sulphate is still called “Glauber’s Salt.” Glauber, himself, attributed remarkable medicinal powers to this compound. He was a firm believer in the claims of Alchemy, and held many fantastic ideas.
Thomas Vaughan (“Eugenius Philalethes”) (1622-1666.)
§ =59.= =Thomas Vaughan=, who wrote under the name of “=Eugenius Philalethes=,” was born at Newton in Brecknockshire in 1622. He was educated at Jesus College, Oxford, graduating as a Bachelor of Arts, and being made a fellow of his college. He appears also to have taken holy orders and to have had the living of St. Bridget’s (Brecknockshire) conferred on him.[80] During the civil wars he bore arms for the king, but his allegiance to the Royalist cause led to his being accused of “drunkenness, swearing, incontinency and bearing arms for the King”; and he appears to have been deprived of his living. He retired to Oxford and gave himself up to study and chemical research. He is to be regarded as an alchemist of the transcendental order. His views as to the nature of the true Philosopher’s Stone may be gathered from the following quotation: “This, reader,” he says, speaking of the mystical illumination, “is the Christian Philosopher’s Stone, a Stone so often inculcated in Scripture. This is the Rock in the wildernesse, because in great obscurity, and few there are that know the right way unto it. This is the Stone of Fire in Ezekiel; this is the Stone with Seven Eyes upon it in Zacharie, and this is the White Stone with the New Name in the Revelation. But in the Gospel, where Christ himself speakes, who was born to discover mysteries and communicate Heaven to Earth, it is more clearly described.”[81] At the same time he appears to have carried out experiments in physical Alchemy, and is said to have met with his death in 1666 through accidentally inhaling the fumes of some mercury with which he was experimenting.