Friedrichstadt Leisure or the Chemical Tantalus

elaborations of the most ingenious minds, the number of which cannot be entered, much less can precepts or rules be prescribed. What happens in vulgar Chemistry, in the exercise of which we experience how the preparations of medicines vary, even if the apparatus is made according to the received method prescribed by the Chemistry reduced into the form of an art, yet a different event succeeds and happens than that which the Chemistry reduced into the form of an art proposes. To reduce Chemistry into the form of an art is the same as if one were to try to whiten an Ethiopian.

Since, therefore, this Chemistry unconstrained by any precepts and any rules is desired among the requirements of the Medical art (only the Chemical Lexicon, only Beguinus’s Primer suffice), therefore, most Excellent Lords, I address you, since today the efforts of all are to remedy the defect in Medicine, that you might also move your hand and mind, so that thus, in the succession of time, besides vulgar officinal preparations, we might obtain better medicines of more present aid according to the principles of a more solid Chemistry. For experience proves that irregular operations have yielded more excellent experiments in chemical matters. Robert Boyle, that great English Chemist, experienced this in his labors, that experiments are treacherous. The entire Chemistry reduced into the form of an art does not possess a single cordial or one that restores strengths in a weak patient. How vain that boasting about Sweet Essence and Potable Gold is, the latest review of the Observations of the Curious Ephemerides, Century V & VI, of the Halle physicians teaches. All those things that are written about Potable Gold are mere dreams, fallacies, impostures; I do not deny that potable gold can be given, but the way in which that deceptive Chemistry reduced into the form of an art teaches to prepare it is not worth a hollow nut. How miserable a tincture of Antimony it teaches is known: it is nothing less than a tincture of Antimony. All those medicines that are composed from Antimony according to its prescription do not deserve the name of medicine. Those that are extracted from metals are of the same bran. Those that they elaborate from Mercury, such as sweet mercury original: "Mercurius dulcis", are most present poisons, which we would lack with greater advantage than we possess them. I will say nothing of the tincture of Moon i.e., Silver and Coral, as they are described according to the Chemistry reduced into the form of an art and that kind of rubbish.

Our Europe luxuriates in the number of Colleges, Academies, and Societies,