Theatrum Chemicum Volumen Secundum

SILVER-MAKING AND GOLD-MAKING

[The watery moisture] protects and holds [the metal] back from the earthy part so it does not fly away. Conversely, when the same fire strives to separate the earthy from the moist and turn it into ash, it is restrained by the moisture, so that both persist safe, unharmed, and unconquered in the battle of fire. This indissoluble A solid mixture of the moist and the dry. solid mixture and union is properly understood regarding gold, which Sacred Scripture mentions: God tested us, it says, like gold in a furnace. And Augurellius in his Chrysopoeia Giovanni Aurelio Augurelli (c. 1441–1524) was an Italian humanist who wrote a famous Latin poem on the "art of making gold." sang thus:

Since nothing of gold is lost
By fire, just as no old age consumes the sun,
And neither rust nor verdigris destroys it,
So much do all things cling there in wondrous joints.
original Latin: "Vni quoniam nihil deperit auro / Igne, Velut solum consumit nulla vetustas, / Ac neque rubigo aut ærugo conficit illa, / Cuncta adeo miris illic compagibus hærent."

Closest to this solid mixture is the mixture of pure silver, which the Royal Psalmist also mentions: The words of the Lord, he says, are pure words, silver tested by fire, proven for the earth, purified seven times. Silver is lost in the fire. Nevertheless, a small amount of it is lost and burned away by fire. For as I said earlier, I saw that silver melted for two months in the fire had lost a twelfth part of its original weight; I saw it clearly on the surface as a very bright yellow glass, which, when struck with a hammer on the anvil, was separated from the silver, while the inside remained pure. This twelfth part of the silver, lost and burned away, passed into that very bright yellow glass.

But all other metals, when continuous fire acts for a short time, exhale, and as the metallic matter and form vanish and perish, what remains is transmuted into glass. For every metal, as Geber The Latinized name of Jabir ibn Hayyan, an 8th-century polymath considered the father of alchemy; his works were fundamental to European chemistry. rightly perceives, when deprived of its own moisture, gives no fusion except that which turns to glass. Vitrification of metals. The cause of this dissolution and corruption is the opposite of what we said regarding silver and gold: namely, that a certain sulfurous and flammable moisture is mixed with their watery moisture, and also because their mixture is imperfect compared to the mixture of silver and gold.

That gold and silver are very thin, and why.

Furthermore, the thinness Here referring to ductility or malleability—the ability to be drawn into wire or beaten into leaf. of silver and gold can be expanded in a wonderful way, but that of gold is found to be incredible from the fact that a single ounce of it will gild the surface of a body which ten ounces of silver could scarcely plate; gilders and silver-platers know this. Indeed, the other metals do not approach the thinness of gold at all.

The purity of the refined moisture.

The cause of such great thinness is the purity of the refined moisture in silver, and specifically in gold. But the cause of thickness Meaning coarseness or lack of ductility. is terrestrial impurity. Density and weight of gold and silver. Finally, the last proper quality of gold and silver—especially gold above all others—is density and weight. And so that it may be known with certainty how much one differs from the other in weight, I will bring forward what I have experienced. I ordered a goldsmith to draw and produce each of the metals into a wire...

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