Albertus Magnus was an encyclopaedic student and author, who took all knowledge for his province. His great work and his great ambition was to interpret Aristotle to his generation. Before his day, the Stagirite was known only in part, but he put within the reach of his contemporaries the whole science of Aristotle, and imbibed no small part of his spirit. He recognized the importance of the study of nature, even of testing it by way of experiment, and in the long years that had elapsed since Theophrastus no one else, except Dioscorides, had made so thorough a study of botany. His paraphrases of the natural history books of Aristotle were immensely popular, and served as a basis for all subsequent studies. Some of his medical works had an extraordinary vogue, particularly the "De Secretis Mulierum" and the "De Virtutibus Herbarum," but there is some doubt as to the authorship of the first named, although Jammy and Borgnet include it in the collected editions of his works. So fabulous was his learning that he was suspected of magic and comes in Naude's list of the wise men who have unjustly been reputed magicians. Ferguson tells(22) that "there is in actual circulation at the present time a chapbook . . . containing charms, receipts, sympathetical and magicalcures for man and animals, . . . which passes under the name of Albertus." But perhaps the greatest claim of Albertus to immortality is that he was the teacher and inspirer of Thomas Aquinas, the man who undertook the colossal task of fusing Aristotelian philosophy with Christian theology, and with such success that the "angelic doctor" remains today the supreme human authority of the Roman Catholic Church. (22) Bibliotheca Chemica, 1906, Vol. I, p. 15.