It may be noted in passing how these old-time fictions have influenced our language, our literature, and especially our medicine. Lunatic, jovial, saturnine, martial, venereal, and mercurial, are etymological reminiscences of the time when temperaments and diseases were associated with the heavenly bodies, and the extent to which metallic compounds acquired their medical reputations from their artificial relationship with the powers which were assumed to have adopted them, is curious. Nitrate of silver was given in brain disorders originally because of the belief in the control of the mental faculties by the moon. The administration of iron for the purpose of invigorating the constitution was largely due to its connection with Mars, whose fame for virility assured the possession of similar virtue in his metallic god-son. [Illustration: These symbols are a few of those used in alchemical treatises of the fifteenth century. They are collected in “The Follies of Science at the Court of Rudolph II.,” by H. C. Bolton, published by the Pharmaceutical Review Publishing Co. of Milwaukee, U.S.A. Reproduced by permission. ] To the ancient planetary symbols the alchemists added a number of other signs to represent chemicals of later discovery, and to make their jargon even more incomprehensible than it would have been without them. Thus they indicated earth, air, fire, and water by the signs [Illustration] These were a few of their other characters: [Illustration] The introduction of any kind of mysticism was dear to the alchemical fraternity, some of whom, perhaps, really believed there was some hidden meaning in the symbols, for there were among the adepts clever men, true discoverers, who cannot be accused of fraudulent intentions, and yet can hardly have accepted literally the poetry they devised. Glauber, contemporary with our James I. and Charles I., was one of these. According to him the symbols were invested with a special mysterious meaning. He showed them in squares, thus: [Illustration] and explained that the extent to which the symbol touches the four sides of the square indicates how near it approaches perfection. Gold, it will be observed, touches all four sides, silver three, and the other metals only two each. INTERPRETING THE SIGNS.