Name Bernard Penot | Died 1617 | |
Bernard Gilles Penot (1519, Guyenne - 1617, Yverdon-les-Bains) was a French Renaissance alchemist and a friend of Nicolas Barnaud.
Penot studied in Basel. Penot came under the influence of Paracelsus through Adam von Bodenstein. He supposedly squandered his entire fortune on his alchemical studies, while searching for the Philosopher's Stone. In the end, he distanced himself from alchemy, which he had previously defended in writing.
Penot occasionally served as doctor in Frankenthal (Pfalz). He travelled a great deal and had a wide network of contacts and correspondents in England, Bohemia and Switzerland, and including Jacob Zwinger and Andreas Libavius. He died impoverished at the hospital in Yverdon-les-Bains (Ifferten), where he had been the city doctor from 1596.
The influential three volume Theatrum Chemicum from 1602, a compendium of early alchemical writings, included the text of entitled: Treatise varii, the vera praeparatione et usu Medicamentorum chemicorum (Praefatio, De medicamentis chemicis). According to Didier Kahn he was also the publisher of the Centum quindecim curationes in 1582 which was attributed to Paracelsus.