The Fire-Stone of Basil, or the Golden Apple

health, and for the expulsion of all kinds of severe ailments and conditions: for Chymia chemistry/alchemy is such an art that teaches how to anatomize or divide the elemental bodies and creatures (which by nature are dissolubilia dissolvable/separable), to separate their substances useful for medicine from their useless superfluity, and to prepare many powerful and highly tested medicamenta medicines. Therefore, by GOD’S will, it has come so far that even the most famous doctors and physicians (whom I will leave unmentioned here for the sake of brevity) must confess that the most severe diseases must be cured solely with metallic and mineral arcana secrets/hidden remedies elaborated through chemical experience and art. It is also not hidden from me that such things are held in high respect by emperors, kings, princes, and potentates, and are partly practiced by them themselves. I have also presented this most submissively to Your Royal Majesty through His Excellency, my gracious lord, the high-born Count and Lord, Lord Henricus, Burggraf of Dohna, Counselor and Chamberlain to the Roman Imperial and Your Royal Majesty, and appointed Colonel, whose personal physician I have been with loyalty. Since an audience has already been most graciously granted to me, I have the most submissive hope that this opusculum little work will be acceptable and pleasing to Your Royal Majesty in all grace, original: "ne jaceat sine patrocinio virtus" let not virtue lie without patronage, in the most gracious consideration that through this intention of mine, the hitherto continued mode of healing the sick will not be abolished, but rather, alongside the opening of my Universal-Medicin universal medicine—which should rightly have the prize and preference as the highest medicine—it will be properly explained, the suitable talents encouraged, and cause given for further research into the mysteries hidden in nature. Indeed, I must not prescribe anything to the personal and court physicians of Your Royal Majesty, for the noble and highly learned D. Esaias Lösch, royal appointed personal physician,