CHAPTER IX.
PARACELSUS AND SOME OTHER ALCHEMISTS.
The accounts which have come to us of the men who followed the pursuit of the _One Thing_ are vague, scrappy, and confusing.
Alchemical books abound in quotations from the writings of _Geber_.
Five hundred treatises were attributed to this man during the middle ages, yet we have no certain knowledge of his name, or of the time or place of his birth.

Hoefer says he probably lived in the middle of the 8th century, was a native of Mesopotamia, and was named _Djabar Al-Konfi_.

Waite calls him _Abou Moussah Djafar al-Sofi_.

Some of the mediaeval adepts spoke of him as the King of India, others called him a Prince of Persia.

Most of the Arabian writers on alchemy and medicine, after the 9th century, refer to Geber as their master.
All the MSS.