There are some observations on chemical physiology, and especially with regard to respiration, in the book on antimony which show their author to have anticipated the true explanation of the {67} theory of respiration. He states that animals breathe, because the air is needed to support their life, and that all the animals exhibit the phenomenon of respiration. He even insists that the fishes, though living in water, breathe air, and he adduces in support of this idea the fact that whenever a river is entirely frozen the fishes die. The reason for this being, according to this old-time physiologist, not that the fishes are frozen to death, but that they are not able to obtain air in the ice as they did in the water, and consequently perish. There are many testimonies to the practical character of all his knowledge and his desire to apply it for the benefit of humanity. The old monk could not repress the expression of his impatience with physicians who gave to patients for diseases of which they knew little, remedies of which they knew less. For him it was an unpardonable sin for a physician not to have faithfully studied the various mixtures that he prescribed for his patients, and not to know not only their appearance and taste and effect, but also the limits of their application. Considering that at the present time it is a frequent source of complaint that physicians often prescribe remedies with whose physical appearances they are not familiar, this complaint of the old-time chemist alchemist will be all the more interesting for the modern physician. It is evident that when Basil Valentine allows his ire to get the better of him it is because of his indignation over the {68} quacks who were abusing medicine and patients in his time, as they have ever since. There is a curious bit of aspersion on mere book-learning in the passage that has a distinctly modern ring, and one feels the truth of Russell Lowell's expression that to read a great genius, no matter how antique, is like reading a commentary in the morning paper, so up-to-date does genius ever remain:--