On the Tincture of Gold or True Potable Gold

On the Medical Use of this Golden Medicine.

We have demonstrated above that the origin of gold is the Sun, as it is endowed with the incredible powers of the terrestrial Sun. For in it lie hidden the powers and virtues of all vegetables, animals, and minerals; which can only be manifested by the philosopher through the benefit of separation, namely, of the intrinsic and purer parts from the more impure.

Perhaps to you this discourse will seem incredible, or even unlikely, asserting that gold is reducible into a spiritual essence, friendly to human nature, and endowed with the powers of all animals, vegetables, and minerals. Indeed, you will hardly persuade one whom Vulcan has not created a philosopher to believe it. But who would create for himself such great troubles, to decide all and individual controversies with certain reasons; which, although possible, is omitted now for certain reasons; yet for the sake of certainty, I wish to refer the reader to the Second Part of our Furnaces, where he will find how, from Antimony and Sulfur, by the benefit of fire [and] through a skilled Chemist, not only the power and faculty of various vegetables are elicited, but also their natural odor; which, however, did not appear in them before they were, as it were, radically dissolved. But if this can be performed through some imperfect and foul mineral, why not also through a perfect and mature metal?

If we were good physicists and most diligent chemists,