About a century after Paracelsus, VAN HELMONT took the lead in physic; he was a man of most indefatigable industry, and spent fifty years in torturing by every chemical experiment he could devise, the various objects in the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms. He was the first physician who applied _alum_ in uterine hemorrhage, and he acquired a great reputation from the success of the practice. SYLVIUS DE LA BOE, and OTHO TACHENIUS, followed in the track of Van Helmont. A prejudice in favour of chemical remedies having been thus introduced, the merited success which attended their operation, and the zeal and perseverance which distinguished the votaries of that science, soon kindled a more general enthusiasm in its favour. It is impossible to reduce into miniature the historical features of these chemical times, so as to bring them within the compass of a lecture: I must therefore rest satisfied with delineating a few of the more prominent outlines. The Galenists, who were in possession of the schools, and whose reasonings were fettered by the strongest predilection for their own doctrines, instantly took the alarm; and the celebrated contest ensued between the _Galenical_ and _Chemical_ sects, which has given such a controversial tone to the writers of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. As this revolt from orthodox authority was in a great degree attributed to the mischievous introduction and unmerited success of Antimonial remedies, so were the preparations of this metal denounced with all the virulence of party spirit;[108] and upon this occasion, in order to support their ground and oppress and persecute their adversaries, the Galenists actually solicited the assistance of secular power; the Supreme Council of Paris accordingly proscribed its use by an edict in 1566, and Besnier was expelled the faculty of medicine in 1609, for having administered it to a patient. In 1637, _Antimonial wine_ was by public authority received into the number of purgatives; and in 1650, a new _arrêt_ rescinded that of 1566, and again restored Antimony to public favour and general reputation; and before we conclude our remarks upon the revolutionary history of this extraordinary metal, it deserves to be remarked, that this very same government that had with such great virulence, and so little justice, persecuted every practitioner who had shewn any predilection for its use, in the year 1720 actually purchased the secret of an antimonial preparation called _Panacea Glauberiana_, and which has been since known by the title of _Kermes Mineral_, from a surgeon of the name of La Legerie, who had acquired the secret from a pupil of Glauber. Before this period the invention of _Calomel_ had taken place; this preparation is first mentioned, although very obscurely, by Oswald Crollius, in his _Basilica Chemica_, in 1608, and in the same year Beguin described it most fully and clearly under the title of _Draco Mitigatus_, in his _Tirocinium Chemicum_, which he