Epistolary Form of Chemical Matters

To the Reader

Various judgments must be undergone by one who sustains the burden of committing his labors to the public and subjecting them to the common censure. It pleased me to warn the reader about some things in the vestibule, lest at the very first threshold he stumble, suspecting something sinister about this work. In the beginning, you will see the word CHEMISTRY on the front of this book; do not think, reader, that I am embracing and professing that mageirike cooking/culinary art The Greek term is struck through in the original text. which has already been debunked several times, by way of the back door. Paracelsianism and chemistry are things far different. It is not honorable for the most chaste and pure art to be named after a most impure man and a depraver of truth. I follow the institutions of the ancients. I would have these [ancient teachings], combined with the observations of recent philosophers—not Paracelsians, but Peripatetics and Hippocratics—explained methodically and illustrated by the perpetuity of precepts. If likewise you find anything which Paracelsus taught in the same way, or even see his name produced, consider that it does not rely on his authority, but on the truth and the previously mentioned philosophers, both ancient and recent. I embrace truth for its own sake, and I illustrate it with the reckoning of those who think most excellently. It is all the same regarding Paracelsus, whether he denies something or affirms it. Next, do not wonder that I used an epistolary form rather than a scientific instruction, and that I have not so much commanded as consulted. I did not