=Arnoldus Villanovanus=, or =Arnaud de Villeneuve=, a Frenchman, is said to have been born in 1240, and to have practised medicine in Barcelona, where he incurred the enmity of the Church by reason of his heretical opinions, and was obliged to leave Spain. He led a wandering life, eventually settling in Sicily, under the protection of Frederick II., and acquired a great reputation as a physician. Summoned thence by Clement V., who lay sick at Avignon, he lost his life by shipwreck in 1313. =Johannes de Rupecissa=, or =Jean de Raquetaillade=, a Franciscan friar who lived from about the middle to the end of the fourteenth century, wrote a number of treatises on alchemy, and described methods of making calomel and corrosive sublimate. He was accused of the practice of magic, and, by order of Innocent VI., was thrown into prison, where he died. He was buried at Villefranche. =George Ripley=, an Englishman, Canon of Bridlington, practised alchemy during the second half of the fifteenth century. He spent some time in Italy in the service of Innocent VIII. On his return to England he became a Carmelite, and died in 1490. Like Bacon, he was charged with magic. According to Mundanus, he followed alchemy with such success that he was able to advance to the knights of St. John of Jerusalem large amounts of gold for the defence of the Isle of Rhodes against the Turks. One of the most important names in connection with the history of alchemy is that of =Basil Valentine=. Of his personal history nothing is known. He was supposed to be a Benedictine monk who lived in Saxony during the latter half of the fifteenth century; but there are grounds for the belief that the numerous writings attributed to him are in reality the work of various hands. The attempt made by Maximilian I. to discover the identity of the author was unavailing, nor have subsequent inquiries had any better result. The collection of books bearing his name, first published in the beginning of the seventeenth century, reveals quite a remarkable number of chemical facts up to that time not generally known. The most important of these relate to antimony and its preparations, such as butter of antimony, powder of algaroth, oxide of antimony, etc. He seems to have known of arsenic, zinc, bismuth, and manganese. He described a number of mercurial preparations, and many of the salts of lead were known to him. He mentions fulminating gold, and was aware that iron could be coated with copper by immersion in a solution of blue vitriol. He knew of green vitriol and the double chloride of iron and ammonium, and gave the modes of making a considerable number of other metallic salts, such as the _sal armoniacum_, which we now know as sal ammoniac. He also appears to have prepared ether and the chloride and nitrate of ethyl.