An ornate horizontal woodcut headpiece features a central feline face or mask flanked by symmetrical scrollwork and floral designs.

CHYMISTRY

PROLEGOMENA.

A decorative woodcut initial C is filled with foliage patterns.Chymistry is an art, reducing natural bodies into artificial ones, by means of solution and coagulation.

The object of chymistry is every mixed body that can be grasped by the hands.

Its purpose is various, according to its different denominations, which often demonstrate its scope, but there are truly four primary ones:

The first is merely physical, whence it seems to deserve the name of physical practice, or the anatomy of bodies by fire: so that we may render the reasons and sciences of natural things more familiar and, as it were, demonstrative to ourselves, not only by contemplating (which contemplation is often wont to be fallacious), but also by manual operation and the intimate disemboweling of the parts themselves, whence by frequently repeated experience, naked truth may appear to us as much as possible, resting upon firmer foundations. This purpose appears to be general, since it can look to all or