Musaeum metallicum

A

Book 33. chap. 6.

taken from those who search for any kind of metal through the viscera of the earth. It will be better to subscribe to the judgment of Eustathius, who thought that this etymology should be deduced ἀπὸ τὸ μετὰ τὰ ἄλλα ἐυρίσκεσθαι original: "from being found one after another"; since one metal is found in succession after another. For when one vein of a metal is detected, another of the same or a different metal is found not far away. Nature has implanted this in metals, so that when one vein appears, miners conceive a great hope of finding another; for this reason, Pliny, not ignorant of this matter, committed to writing that when one vein of metals is found, in almost all material, another is found not far off. Hence he confesses that the Greeks rightly named them metalla. It is not inept, therefore, that someone sang on this matter:

Book 1. chap. 1.

Therefore, to signify this kind of fossil, we read the word "metal" in all the writings of the Greeks and Latins. Encellius, however, in his Metallic History, called a larger mineral body "metal," in distinction from other fossils which are called "intermediate minerals" by him. Among the French, metal is called metail, among the Italians metallo, among the Germans Ein metalli, and among the Spaniards metal.

B

Book 3. on minerals, chap. 6.

Exerc. 106.

Names of metals according to the astrologers.

Finally, astrologers and chemists call individual metals by the individual names of the planets. They call lead Saturn, tin Jupiter, gold the Sun, silver the Moon, copper Venus, and quicksilver Mercury. Albertus wrote that this came to be because many astrologers opined that individual metals are produced by individual planets. But Scaliger attempted to explode this affinity and nomenclature of metals with the planets as ridiculous. For he wrote that such men not only assigned the names of planets to metals but also, moved by no firm reasons, decided that many other fossils correspond to the signs of the Zodiac, asserting that asphalt corresponds to Taurus, orpiment to Gemini, sal ammoniac to Cancer, red arsenic to Virgo, vitriol to Libra, sulfur to Scorpio, rock alum to Sagittarius, fissile alum to Capricorn, and saltpeter to Aquarius. But a lively history of these matters will be delivered in their own chapters.

C

DEFINITION AND FORM.

D

Paracelsus' opinion.

Geber the Arab.

Book 1. Alchemy, chap. 31.

Book 4. Meteor.

Nature of metals.

Authors disagree among themselves in assigning the definition and form of metals. Paracelsus, first of all, left it written that metals are the "best part" of common stones, and by this "best part" he understood the spirit, bitumen, oil, and fat of the stones. But since the same author elsewhere committed to record that stones are the excrements and purgings of the stars, by just reasons, according to his own mind, a metal must be established as the best part of the excrements of the heavens; and thus this definition of metals must be placed among the portents of Paracelsus. Geber the Arab seems to define metal more correctly when he declares a metal to be a fossil and fusible body, which is extended and dilated in every direction by a hammer. Others think it should be said that a metal is a perfectly mixed body of similar parts, produced in the veins of the earth by a predominant humid exhalation through the force of celestial heat, elaborated by a suitable measure of light and motion, and finally congealed by cold. This is a description of metals that is too diffuse, just as the definition of those who wished metals to be vapors with a certain exhalation, condensed by the vehemence of cold, is too narrow. It will therefore be better to assert that a metal is a hard fossil body, fusible by fire, and which, consisting in its own nature, can be extended in every direction by a hammer; since no thing is found which is dilated by a hammer and is not a metal. From this we conclude that quicksilver is in no way to be placed among true metals. Wherefore, this opinion seems more conformable to the mind of Aristotle, since he attests that whatever is dug from the earth and has been purified by it, then melted by fire, and ἐλατὸν malleable, should rightly be called a metal by everyone. For those things that can be dilated by a hammer into breadth and depth are called ἐλατὰ malleable things by Aristotle. It should be noted, however, that a metal is distinguished from other fossil bodies to the extent that this fossil and fusible body, liquefied by the violence of heat and cooled after the heat is extinguished, returns to its pristine hardness and form: whereas many very hard stones are melted by fire,