Joannes Agricola A Treatise on Gold

[ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

important the menstrua are. Often a single bad manipulation hinders a great work, and those who will only use a
common spirit of salt, as the distillers sell, will no doubt work in vain and achieve nothing useful. It is the same with
the oil of wine whose preparation, as already mentioned, you will find further on. The better the wine, the more
wonderful the oil will be. You can use Spanish wine and will obtain all the more, as experience has taught me. But
his you must take careful note of: If you have distilled once, you must repeat it once or several times. Then you will
get a good medicament, for the often repeated process turns the work into a subtle medicine.
When you have driven all the gold over the alembic, put it in a cold place for some time, such as a cool cellar, and in
time beautiful transparent crystals, like rubies, will sprout. You can take those out with a wooden pair of tongs, and
dry them on paper. There are very few of them, as the Body does not all rise in one go over the alembic. Therefore
the Death's Head can be taken out, reverberated with sulphur flowers, and the gold calx will become quite pure. Pour
again some spirit of salt of salt and oil of wine over that, and proceed as before. The entire Body will finally rise
over the alembic. More will be reported on this at another place when we will deal with other preparations.
These crystals still have another advantage: Take one part of them, add 3 parts of Mercury of Saturn optim. purified,
set it together in sand in a phial and give it a graduated fire. Mercury will precipitate in a short time, and it will not
only result in a fine medicine but also in a sample of gold, so that you can see with your own eyes that the Mercury
of lead can thereby be turned into gold. It can either be melted with borax or melted and assayed by the cupel with
lead. Thus you will certainly find that it is no empty talk, although some would deny that it is a proof. It might well
be so, as the crystals made of gold can again be brought back into a Body and provide a gold proof. It is easy to
answer this by first observing the weight of the crystals, then that of the added Mercury and the prepared gold. In
this way you will see if you have an excess or not. I am of opinion that there will be some, but I do not say that it
will be of great importance in regard to all costs incurred, because it does cost something to prepare the Mercury of
lead. Thus, these crystals also do not just cost a little, yet one can nevertheless prove thereby that it is possible to
make a transmutation without the Universal Tincture. Whoever wishes, can try it, he will not work in vain, nor will
he lose much thereby, and the gold will turn out quite beautiful, more beautiful than that from the Hungarian mines,
of which I once had 3 ounces together.
Nor is this oil of gold to be despised, because it is of great usefulness in medicine if properly applied. Whatever I
have learned, I will reveal. It may well be that others have also tried it for other sicknesses, but I have mostly used
this composition for the French disease (venereal disease), when it strongly drove the poison out through
perspiration, thus healing the infected persons.
First I tried it on a scholar who had a training school not far from Vienna in Austria. He was not satisfied with
Germany but devoted himself to the French. ("The French" was the name given to syphilis). He had acquired it from
a French "putain", or whore. He already had it to the highest degree: his hair was falling out, boils came out on his
temples, spots were also on his thighs, and whatever other symptoms there are in such an infection. I did tell him
that I was willing to cure him, but that it would be at great expense as the infection had already advanced so far. The
woman with whom he was living offered to assume all the costs, if only he could be restored to good health. I
thought they were sleeping together, and it looked to me as if she were also infected, but she did not say anything
about it. I prepared this oil of gold for him, as I had received enough money for it, and gave him 6 drops a day in one
dose, in some spirit of Lignum Sanctum (holy wood). I made him perspire to dryness in a bathroom, and when he
had done this for four days, he got a rash over his body like the rind of a birchtree. He was very ugly to look at, as
his blood was totally infected. I continued for 14 days, and it drove the disease out of his body most formidably.
Then I made him take a bath in the following solution: 2 lbs. of sulphur, 4 lbs. of salt, 1 lb. of tartar. All this had to
boil strongly in a kettle with water, till the water was quite whitish. In that he bathed four times, when the dirt fell
off him and he became quite clean and healthy.
When children contract smallpox or the measles, they cannot be helped by any better remedy than this oil of gold,
giving them once, twice, or three times each time 4 drops in a tablespoon of lentil broth. It will soon drive them out
and off the heart, so that they are rid of the sickness in a few days.
Against dizzy spells it is likewise a wonderful expedient. With it I cured two wealthy persons in a short time, one a
man, the other a woman, both belonging to the nobility of Thuringia. I did not give them more than 6 drops in a
spoonful of swallow-water, continuing thus for 14 days. Externally, I had their temples rubbed with snake grease.
Their dizziness disappeared, and one has to-date not noticed anything of it in them.
Nasal polyps are chased away very quickly, as I tried doing for a noble young lady in 1630. She was greatly troubled
with it. I first put some spirit of Nieri on it until was everywhere sorely corroded, although it was sore enough by
itself, greatly hindering her breathing and speaking. After that, she had to coat it every morning and evening with
this oil, and it may well have still other virtues in medicine. But because I have no experience in that regard, I cannot
give a true report on it. The kind reader will have to be content with the experiments I have related.
With this oil I still did something else: I took one Quentlein (1.66 gr.) of it, added to it 3 Quentlein oil or tincture of
sweet antimony and congealed it in a phial to a fixed, darkred powder, which took four weeks. Finally I gave it a
very strong fire and it flowed together in a glass. I removed it, pulverized it, and used it in many sicknesses. It also
did its share amazingly well and was almost like a panacea.
I wanted to know if I could also put a golden-yellow coat on Luna (silver) in aquafort. I beat the calx down and
edulcorated it, then added some of this medicine and set it in a gradation fire. The Luna calx turned brownred in 8 [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

Wątki