Beschreibung:

ALCHEMY, DISTILLATION AND MEDICINE, MANUSCRIPT IN ENGLISH [England] 1702 4° (232 x 180mm.), 258 + (5) pages plus blank leaves at end, outer margins ruled in red throughout. Written in brown ink in a fine cursive bookhand. (Lacking first leaf, presumably title, otherwise in fine condition). Contemporary reversed calf. A very curious manuscript apparently copied from a 1677 original, relating chemical science and experiments to the human body and soul. There are long discussions of philosophical dissolution, transmutation, cibation and fermentation of elixirs, suggesting a strong Rosicrucian influence. The author would certainly have been familiar with Robert Fludd. The principal contents are: Preliminary notes and 'practick part' (pp.3-19); a treatise on the action of Salpetre, commencing ' In the year of our Lord 1677, All earthly treasures are hidden in the earth for it containes a virgin earth which has a living body, spirit and soule, it is the sonn of the sun and moon the salt of the earth having in itself its own magnet which is a fixed salt by which is attracted and concentrated the spirit of the Universe' (p.21); Of the Matter (p.41); Of the rectification digestion and dephlegmation of the Spirit (p.51); Of the preparation of the fix Body (p.68); Concerning Dissolution (p.69); Of Imbibition (p.76); Cohabation and Alteration and Putrefaction (p.97); The operations with the foliated earth and mercury and their fixation into severall elixirs (p.169); Alteration of the calxes of mettals and the operation of the mercurys and foliated earth upon them (pp.220-236); Appendix (pp.237-248), dated 1702 at end - Added in another hand recipes, dated 1702, extracts from John Heydon and Hartman's Chymicall Secrets (pp.251-258) - plus 5 pages of later additions, including an epitaph on the Duke of Buckingham in Latin and English.