De alchimia opuscula complura veterum philosophorum, quorum catalogum sequens pagella indicabit

...individual diseases that currently receive treatment are correctly cured by this alone. They thought it should be extracted by continuous and indefatigable cooking, drawing an argument from seeds and other things born of the earth, which are themselves produced into light by a similar reason, namely, the successive movement of natural heat, and which offer a certain vegetable substance of a living thing. Nor should it be doubted that those ancient philosophers themselves once possessed the most perfect knowledge of that science, by which they extracted the principal and incorrupt substance of every sensible thing by following the order of nature with a wondrous talent, after purging the dregs of all four elementary substances, without any difficult method. A later age, laboring to prepare Sophistic gold original: "aurum Sophisticum" - synthetic or fake gold (as we have found), converted the end of a good thing to a worse use. For we have seen many of our own age sweating over the same labor, who, besides not lacking a great expense of their personal wealth, also do not attain what they attempt to seek. Thus the art, which is most certain by itself, has fallen into contempt, corrupted by the false opinion of the unlearned, which often happens to better things. But antiquity sought something far different and greater, which, observing the natural order of things being born and growing...