Currents in the Sixteenth Century

Oswald Crollius, or Croll, (1580-1609) was another influential advocate of Paracelsus, and a contributor to the chemical remedies. His Bascilica Chemica, Frankfurt, 1608, often republished, was his most popular work. It contained an exposition of the teachings of Paracelsus, a treatise on materia medica in which he emphasizes the chemical medicines, and a treatise on the doctrine of Signatures, a subject also treated in the Paracelsan literature, and which assumes that medicinal plants or other sources 

1 Gerhardus Dorn, Clavis Totius, etc. Lugduni, MDLXVIII, p. 3. 

Croll is credited with being the first to mention the explosive fulminate of gold and with having given the name of lima, cornea, horn silver, to the fused chloride of silver. Kopp also credits to him the first announcement of the acid from amber (succinic acid) fios succinii.  

An enthusiastic advocate of Paracelsan ideas was Joseph Duchesne, better known under his Latin appellation of Quercetanus (1521- 1609). He was born in Gascony, studied in Germany, and in France was attached as physician to the court of Henry IV. He was an extreme partizan of the chemical medicines of Paracelsus and added others of his own initiative. His position at court protected him from the hostility of the medical profession, then generally opposed to the new remedies, though his arrogance and many fantastic notions served to make him many enemies in the profession. 

As a chemist he contributed nothing of note. Hoefer cites a passage from his treatise in Materia Medica, in which he says that saltpeter, (sal petrae) contains a spirit which is of the nature of air and which nevertheless cannot sustain flame, but is rather opposed to it. Though this description would apply to nitrogen, yet as the above statement is accompanied by no further elucidation it seems a rather strained interpretation that nitrogen might have been isolated from saltpeter by Quercetanus.0 

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