To the Kind Reader

Please do not wonder, kind reader, why I have written again about the origin of metals original: "metallorum ortu" after Georg Agricola and Thomas Erastus Georgius Agricola (1494–1555) was a pioneering mineralogist, and Thomas Erastus (1524–1583) was a Swiss physician known for his fierce opposition to Paracelsus., most learned men with whom I cannot be compared. Truly, nothing else moved me to undertake this task except the stubbornness of the Chemistarum Alchemists, or, to speak more truly, the madness that has blinded their minds. Indeed, this alienation of the mind arises from shameful greed and the accursed hunger for gold original: "auri sacra fame", a reference to Virgil's Aeneid, which in the course of time leads to the greatest lack of resources, from which intolerable misery finally proceeds. It is sufficiently and more than clear that this has happened to many Alchemists, who, when they have melted down not only their gold and silver but also the remainder of their fortunes by blowing their bellows, have at last been reduced, wretchedly, to the deepest poverty pauperiem.