The Fire-Stone of Basil, or the Golden Apple

handle the degree well, as true physicians do not intend here. Just as the most famous physician of Emperor Ferdinand I, Petrus Andr. Mathiolus, when he mentions the faculties of drinkable gold original: "auri potabilis" (which are most significant), he says, I dare say that no one can be a physician absolutely, or even a mediocre one, who is not exercised in this most noble science of distillation. This is to be observed elsewhere, but especially in chronic diseases, where the entire mass of blood in the whole circuit of the veins is corrupted and filled with the seeds of many diseases. Indeed, these diseases can scarcely be overcome without metallic substances, for only by these are they so attenuated and acquire such a power of penetration that they permeate the habit of the whole body, whereas other plants cannot withstand the fire to such a degree. And those who approach such diseases without the knowledge of how to handle metallic things usually desist with the business unfinished and with great disgrace to both themselves and the medical art.

D. Andernacus says: Sublimes spiritus sublimed spirits extracted from solid and fossil bodies are offered for the medicine of the most difficult diseases that do not yield to other aids, and [are offered] before those [other remedies] for the sake of preserving the body; how badly this is often handled. What nature desires to expel through vomiting as superfluous and harmful, one gives cathartica purgatives, then considers whether the condition becomes worse; for the malignitas malignancy is only truly drawn deeper into the body, and nature is noticeably hindered in her due office. When cathartica or lenitiva mild laxatives are sometimes necessary, no great harm can arise; when one employs vomitoria emetics, especially where something of the principal inner members—liver, lungs, and the like—is damaged, [it is harmful].

Often and much more harm than benefit is added to nature when the physician errs in the degrees of the qualities of purgative things, and even more so when phlegmagoga phlegm-purging agents are used for melanagogis black bile-purging agents, or cholagoga bile-purging agents for phlegmagoga, and thus vice versa, to diminish the exaltations, summitates summits/peaks, powers, and total strengths of the humors. When, instead of necessary diaphoreticorum sweat-inducing agents, cordialium heart-strengthening agents, and corroborantium strengthening agents, one administers purgantia purgatives and things that weaken nature—what could be more harmful?

What can be more contrary, burdensome, and intolerable to nature than when the affected site is not recognized by a physician; when the liver is treated for the lungs, the lung for the liver, the stomach for the spleen, the head for the stomach, the kidneys for the spleen; and cold is given for warm, dry for moist; laxatives instead of constrictives, constrictives instead of expectorants, and thus one does not act according to nature and order? What great error is not now being committed in the Hungarian fever and other contagious conditions, where one wants to cure such things initially through sudorifera sweat-inducing agents and phlebotomias bloodlettings?