The Fire-Stone of Basil, or the Golden Apple

Furthermore, to use the words of Raymundus Lullius a medieval philosopher and alchemist, our universal medicine wondrously strengthens all spirits and brings imbalanced humors into alignment. It confers benefit to every constitution, whereas those cures seen in particular instances are never sufficient. The latter is full of error, while the former is entirely secure. Symptoms, paroxysms, and pains are mitigated, and the evacuation of excrements is instituted (from which nature is weakened for the most part, and for this reason, strengthening agents are added), but the roots of a more fixed disease are rarely eradicated. The seminal tinctures of diseases become recurrent and excite new tortures at intervals. Nevertheless, a particular cure, when aided by universal medicine, often performs the office of a universal treatment by consuming the roots of impurities and comforting the native virtue.

In the particular healing of diseases, we use moistening, drying, heating, and cooling agents; likewise, we cannot do without medicinal softening, hardening, laxative, rarefying, dissolving, condensing, blocking, opening, attenuating, thickening, absorbing, attracting, extracting, repelling, maturing, detergent, purging, corroding, biting, and agglutinating agents, as well as emetics, cathartics, diuretics, enemas, diaphoretics, strengthening agents, cephalics, warm and cold agents, cordials, stomachics, hepatics, nephritics, uterus-purging agents, uterus-strengthening agents, and anti-arthritics. If this method of curing is to be observed, we must, by the highest necessity, have these at hand. Pain-relievers original: "Anodyna" must be observed, bloodlettings original: "venarum sectiones" must not be omitted, and these now-enumerated medicaments are used, ordered, and advised by the physician according to the circumstances of the disease and the constitution of the patient. Just as these remedies, when applied in accordance with nature, create excellent benefit, so too can more be ruined through their misuse than if one allowed nature to work and function entirely without assistance.

It is undeniably true that sometimes the causes and essences of a disease, because of the most hidden roots and minerals lurking within the principles or nature, are so secretive and quiet that such things—and indeed the disease itself—are unrecognizable even by the most learned physicians and are therefore left incurable.

I will not speak of what those practitioners unskilled in medicine (for not all cooks carry such long knives, nor are all those who hold the title doctors true physicians) do without knowledge of the sympathies and antipathies of natural and astral things, and without knowledge of the fundamental pillars of Chymia Alchemy (without which no one can be a just physician) in their Galenic and Aristotelian simple and external qualities, in a subtle way, upon