Friedrichstadt Leisure or the Chemical Tantalus

therefore I waste time uselessly, I undertook to elaborate this Treatise. I had the intention to compose a Commentary on Medical Machiavellism original: "Machiavellismo Medico", for which there are many occasions given daily: but I was forced to change my decree. Meanwhile, however, what is delayed is not taken away. But it pleased me again to communicate these few pages to the learned world regarding the L. P. B. Lapis Philosophorum Philosophers' Stone. The subject is indeed of arduous effort, partly because I have been removed from the Library, and partly because it pertains to that kind of labor, or to that sort of sect of Philosophers, which is contradicted on all sides, and to besmirch such labor with calumnies is, as it were, a custom accepted by many: but since it is nevertheless a labor by which I am neither injurious to the divine Majesty, nor offend the Magistrate, nor harm my neighbor, I have decided to test the powers of my wit regarding the subject. These are now the things which I wished and was able to bring forward in the place of a preface, and I ask you, Kind Reader, that you may deign to receive this labor of mine, such as it is, with a kind countenance. Whether I shall write more on this subject is doubtful, except that I would willingly wish that my One Hundred Chemical Paradoxes might go forth into the public, and if God grants life and health, I shall make the effort. Farewell, favor me, Kind Reader, and I pray, remember me for good. Again and again, V. & F. T. T. Nestor II. Friedrichstadt, 1717, May 15th, at the third hour in the afternoon.

Epistle to the Chemiatrists Chemical-physicians of our Europe.

The theater, most Excellent Sir! which this century, of which we are now in the XVIIth year, is adorned with such great and such illustrious men, excellent in every kind of science, art, and language, that no past century from the birth of our Savior could show a similar theater equally splendid and flourishing in every kind of polymathy varied learning, the splendor of which theater would not so strike the eyes of men, unless the aid of God had informed the minds of so many men and opened to us what the learned world was doing, and lest also, what was being done in the most diffuse literary world, lay hidden. For that end, the Leipzig Acts of the Learned are published by the Learned in our Germany, and the Novels of the Learned are edited weekly, and there is no nation in all of Europe in which there are not found curious men who, as it were, plant an arboretum and garden for posterity, so that the most recent age of the world might also be able to seek information after our time concerning the labors of their ancestors.