Musaeum metallicum

The enigma of the chemists.

...revealed by the philosophers under the following enigma.
E

Visit the Interior of the Earth, by Rectifying You will Find the Hidden Stone the True Medicine.

For the first letters of the aforementioned words form this word (Vitriolum Vitriol), in which, as he himself asserts, the material principles of metals consist; for by sublimating mineral vitriol with chemical instruments, an oil is elicited, by which metals are reduced to their first matter.

Book 3. Meteor. last chap.

In such a variety of opinions, we must have recourse to the material cause proposed by Aristotle and his followers, who proclaims that dry exhalation is the matter of all fossils and the breath of all metals. The Greeks are accustomed to call both exhalations ἀτμίδα vapor and ἀναθυμίασιν exhalation; we are accustomed to call the former, because it is watery, a vapor, and the latter, because it is earthy, a breath halitus. But it is not to be believed that vapor produces metals and other fossils without breath, and breath without vapor; for one is always mixed with the other, and this is to be understood according to predominance, and thus there will be as many species of exhalation to be established as there are things that flow from them: hence the matter of the generation of all metals is manifested; for that breath, received within the cracks of rocks and earths, thickened by cold, finally passes into this or that metal, insofar as it is sublimated from this or that matter. And this is most clearly in the realm of truth, since if the rocks of metallic veins are changed, they do not afterwards pour forth such metals as were previously dug out from there. F A changed location of fossil veins hinders generation.

Therefore, there exits from the viscera of the earth a breath called παχυώδης thick/dense, which fills the pores of subtle and pure earth, and when joined to it, turns into gold, and when it arrives at impure and cold places, it becomes lead; for the more purified the place is that the breath seeks, the more beautiful the metals will result, and conversely, when confined in dry and impure earth, an iron product shines forth, and so on one must reason concerning the remaining metals. Whence one must conjecture that the opinion of Agricola is to be exploded, who deemed that metals are generated from juice and not from breath, when nevertheless continuous observation and experience teach that filaments, which emerge like very thin hairs in gold and silver mines, clearly indicate that they are concreted from breath and not from juice. Exerc. 102.

Scaliger

Indeed, Scaliger seems to establish this more evidently, when he pronounces that gold in Hungary comes forth showing the appearance of a filament.

G

Therefore, one should not adhere to the opinion of those who believed that simpler and less perfect metals first flowed from breath, and then from these all others are generated through a more exact and elaborated cooking, so that gold and silver are said to be the most perfect and absolute; while the others are held as dispositions and ways to them. This opinion is to be refuted entirely, since metals are constituted as species of the same genus, and species are not so disposed by nature that one is directed to another, but are equally primarily comprehended under the same genus; for gold and silver are not said to be more composed than the others, but are generated from exhalations equally primarily as the other metals. Thus, it must be concluded regarding the material cause of metals that Plato and Aristotle feel the same, as Olympiodorus and others testify; for both establish that earthy and dry breath constitutes their matter. In book Meteor.

Therefore, the opinion of Agricola does not please us when he argues against Plato and Aristotle that it is not likely that so many breaths can be contained together so that such a quantity of metals emerges from them as is extracted from the mines day by day. Book 5. on subterranean causes.

Agricola ought to have noticed that a great quantity of exhalation is indeed found in the viscera of the earth, and new material is very easily generated successively, which is elicited not only by the force of the sun's rays from the earth and water, but is also generated from the cold air condensed in the earth. H Material cause of metals.

Again, when Agricola argued, if metals consisted of the aforementioned matter, they would without a doubt turn into the aforementioned breath when they are dissolved, and not into water. But Agricola should have meditated that metals dissolved by the heat of fire do not turn into water because they are generated from water, but because they are generated from frozen watery matter, and when they are melted, they do not pass into water, but into a flowing mixed humor, which, if it were later dissolved into its own principles, would without a doubt turn into breath.

Thus far, it has been said concerning the matter of metals; now it interests us to weigh the other three causes: formal, efficient, and final. If we look at the form, many, among whom was Galen, wanted temperament to be the substantial form of metals. But the opinion of Aristotle pleases us more, who proclaimed the form of metals to be perfection and an act distinct from temperament: provided that it is supposed...