Alchindus
An Arabian doctor of the eleventh century, placed by some authorities among the number of magicians, but regarded by others as merely a superstitious writer. He used charmed words and combinations of figures in order to cure his patients. Demonologists maintained that the devil was responsible for his power, and based their statements on the fact that he had written a work entitled The Theory of the Magic Arts. He was probably, however, nothing more formidable than a natural philosopher at a time when all matter of science and philosophy were held in suspicion. Some of his theories were of a magical nature, it is true, as when he essayed to explain the phenomena of dreams by saying that they were the work of the elementals, who acted their strange fantasies before the mind of the sleeper as actors play in a theatre. But on the whole there is little to connect him with the practice of magic.