Oswald Croll

Oswald Croll, also called Crollius, was an alchemist and professor of medicine at the University of Marburg in Hesse, Germany. A strong proponent of alchemy and of using chemistry in medicine, he wrote books that urged his contemporaries to treat chemistry and alchemy as two separate fields. He received his doctorate in medicine at Marburg in 1582, continued his studies at Heidelberg, Strasbourg and Geneva, and arrived in Prague in 1597, where through Rudolf II he came into contact with other alchemical writers. His major work, the Basilica Chymica, first appeared in 1608, and he drew on the writings of Paracelsus to organise his views.