16. Beccheri, Lancelotti, etc. Epistolæ quatuor Chemicæ. Beccher’s great merit was the contrivance of a chemical theory, by which all the known facts were connected together and deduced from one general principle. But as this theory was adopted and considerably modified by Stahl, it will be better to lay a sketch of it before the reader, after mentioning a few particulars of the life and labours of one of the most extraordinary men whom Germany has produced; a man who, in spite of the moroseness and haughtiness of his character, and in spite of the barbarity of his style, raised himself to the very first rank as a man of science; and had the rare or almost unique fortune of giving laws at the same time to two different and important sciences, which he cultivated together, without letting his opinions respecting the one influence him with regard to the other. These sciences were chemistry and medicine. George Ernest Stahl was born at Anspach, in the year 1660. He studied medicine at Jena under George Wolfgang Wedel; and got his doctor’s degree at the age of twenty-three. Immediately after this he began his career as a public lecturer. In 1687 the Duke of Weimar gave him the title of physician to the court. In 1694 he was named, at the solicitation of Frederick Hoffmann, second professor of medicine in the University of Halle, which had just been established. Hoffmann and he were at that time great friends, though they afterwards quarrelled. Both of them were men of the very highest talents and both were the founders of medical systems which, of course, each was anxious to support. Hoffmann had greatly the superiority in elegance and clearness of style, and in all the amenities of polite manners. But perhaps the moroseness of Stahl, and the obscurity, or rather mysticism of his style, contributed equally with the more amiable qualities of Hoffmann to excite the attention and produce the veneration with which he was viewed by his pupils, and, indeed, by the world at large.