Joseph Barsalou built on his traditional knowledge of herbs with an introduction to medicine and philosophy reading Galen, Aristotle and Pythagoras.
With the many political and religious battles being fought nearby the region was rife with disease: tuberculosis, typhus, scurvy and other fevers.
[3] It is believed that it is Philippe Jacques de Maussac who introduced Joseph Barsalou to Antonio Barberini and the Italian leg of his journey.
As Antonio Barberini's health was restored, he insisted on keeping Barsalou as his personal physician and took him to Paris and Rome.
With the enthronement of the new Pope Innocent X, and the subsequent disgrace of Barberinis for corruption and nepotism Barsalou lost favour and had to leave the papal city.
Ferdinando II was a patron of science and a student of Galileo himself, and founded the Academy of Experimentation in 1642 and attracts the brightest minds of the time.
In 1650 he returned to Montpellier in France, where he took care of his lifelong friend Philippe Jacques de Maussac, who died that same year.
He perhaps found his inspiration in a broad range of ideas that circulate at the time, from the alchemical texts of Jabir to Fibonacci's work on numbers and Pythagorean principles amongst many others.
Despite this, Joseph Barsalou was not an alchemist: there is no reference in his letters to a quest for the philosopher's stone or the transmutation of metal into gold.