SILVER-MAKING AND GOLD-MAKING

original: "ARGYR. ET CHRYSOP." refers to Argyropoeia and Chrysopoeia, the alchemical arts of making silver and gold.

...very heavy, mute, shining, equally matured original: "digestum"; in alchemy, the "digestion" of metals refers to their slow perfection or ripening within the earth in the belly of the earth, washed for a very long time by mineral water, and enduring the trial of the ash-cup original: "cineritij"; the process of cupellation, where metal is heated in a cup made of bone ash to remove impurities and the cement original: "cementi"; a refining process using "cement" (a mixture of salts and bricks) to purify gold. This endurance of the cement is the specific difference, because in this trial all other metals are burnt up and turned to ash, but gold alone remains unharmed within it.

Silver is also defined by the same Geber Geber is the Latinized name of Jabir ibn Hayyan, a legendary 8th-century polymath and "father of chemistry." as follows: Silver is a metallic body, white with a pure whiteness, clean, hard, sounding, and lasting through the ash-test. This last part is its own specific property, since tin, lead, copper, and iron perish and are corrupted in the trial of the ash-cup, while silver persists in it. Other metals also have their own specific properties by which they differ from silver and gold and from each other, but discussing these and the solutions to the proposed question is of little relevance here, since their definitions have been sufficiently treated by the same Geber, Albertus Magnus A 13th-century Dominican friar and philosopher who wrote extensively on minerals., Georgius Agricola A 16th-century German scholar known as the "father of mineralogy.", and others. We only need to investigate the nature and form of silver and gold, which is recognized from the aforementioned specific properties and their definition, so that by art we may lead a matter closely related to them to those same properties through the efficient cause.

For even if the forms of silver and gold are not as clearly known to us as the forms of other plant and animal bodies—which are perceived by their actions and effects—nevertheless, whatever metallic body we see enduring and persisting in the trials proper to silver and gold, we shall rightly say it is silver and gold. For the first knowledge of things comes from the senses. And just as we judge plants and animals by their action, so we judge silver and gold by the endurance original: "perpessione"; as established on the previous page, this refers to how the matter is "acted upon" by external forces like fire. of their matter.

The causes of these properties specific to silver and gold are these: that all metals are fusible is caused by moisture. Likewise, they are ductile because of the viscosity original: "lentorem"; a quality of being sticky, tenacious, or able to be stretched without breaking. of the moisture from which they consist. For things that are viscous preserve their continuity longest; for the viscosity of this moisture has a firm balance with the dry parts. Therefore, both viscosity and dryness, with a certain balance, ensure that they are not shattered when struck by hammers, but are ductile. And according to how much more or less of this is in the metals, some are drawn out more or less than others.

Hence gold, which has the most viscosity tempered by dryness, is the most ductile of all metals; silver follows it, then copper, then iron; then lead and tin.