[260] George Starkey (1606-1665 or 1666) has special interest for American readers. He seems to have been born in the Bermudas and to have obtained the bachelor's degree in England. He then went to America and in 1646 obtained the master's degree at Harvard, apparently under the name of Stirk. He met Eirenaeus Philalethes (see note 254 above) in America and learned alchemy from him. Returning to England, he sold quack medicines there, and died in 1666 from the plague after dissecting a patient who had died of the disease. Among his works was the _Liquor Alcahest, or a Discourse of that Immortal Dissolvent of Paracelsus and Helmont_, which appeared (1675) some nine years after his death. [261] Platt (1552-1611) was the son of a London brewer. Although he left a manuscript on alchemy, and wrote a book entitled _Delights for Ladies to adorne their Persons_ (1607), he was knighted for some serious work on the chemistry of agriculture, fertilizing, brewing, and the preserving of foods, published in _The Jewell House of Art and Nature_ (1594). [262] "Those who wish to call a man a liar and deceiver speak of him a writer of almanacs; but those who (would call him) a scoundrel and an imposter (speak of him as) a chemist." [263] "Trust your barque to the winds but not your body to a chemist; any breeze is safer than the faith of a chemist." [264] Probably the Jesuit, Pere Claude Francois Menestrier (1631-1705), a well known historian. [265] The author was Christopher Nesse (1621-1705), a belligerent Calvinist, who wrote many controversial works and succeeded in getting excommunicated four times. One of his most virulent works was _A Protestant Antidote against the Poison of Popery_. [266] John Case (c. 1660-1700) was a famous astrologer and physician. He succeeded to Lilly's practice in London. In a darkened room, wherein he kept an array of mystical apparatus, he pretended to show the credulous the ghosts of their departed relatives. Besides his astrological works he wrote one serious treatise, the _Compendium Anatomicum nova methodo institutum_ (1695), in which he defends Harvey's theories of embryology. [267] Marcelis (1636-after 1714) was a soap maker of Amsterdam. It is to be hoped that he made better soap than values of [pi]. [268] John Craig (died in 1731) was a Scotchman, but most of his life was spent at Cambridge reading and writing on mathematics. He endeavored to introduce the Leibnitz differential calculus into England. His mathematical works include the _Methodus Figurarum ... Quadraturas determinandi_ (1685), _Tractatus ... de Figurarum Curvilinearum Quadraturis et locis Geometricis_ (1693), and _De Calculo Fluentium libri duo_ (1718).