BECHER’S SUBTERRANEAN PHYSICS,

AND THE BECHERIAN SPECIMEN BY STAHL.

THE AUTHOR’S PREFACE.

TO THE KIND READER, JOHANN JOACHIM BECHER SENDS GREETINGS.

It is a common proverb that there is no disputing tastes, as both reason and experience demonstrate; for some enjoy sweets, others sours, and others bitters; indeed, for women suffering from the disease of pica pica; a medical condition characterized by an appetite for non-nutritive substances such as ice, hair, or paper, nothing is more delicious than chalk, coals, and similar "delicacies." If this proverb is applied to our internal senses, it holds just as true; for some are delighted by music, some by joy, others by sorrow, and not a few by Bacchus The Roman god of wine and Venus The Roman goddess of love and sex. But who would believe that among so many tastes, one could be found by which reputation, health, money, time, and life itself are lost? Surely no one would be affected by such a thing—neither the foolish nor the wise. Yet, meanwhile, a certain class of men is found who are either uniquely wise, or uniquely foolish, or, if you prefer, neither; they are eccentric, irregular, heterogeneous, and anomalous. They call the study "Chemistry," and its lovers "Alchemists." To these men, nothing is more acceptable, nothing sweeter, nothing more pleasant or more glorious than to be extremely filthy, to have a foul reputation in the world, to pour out their money along with their fame, to be pale from poisons, to be perpetually soaked, to be always searching, to have nothing, and meanwhile to lose all common sense—plainly according to that verse:

You who are drenched with rainwater, smelling of soot,
Blinded by smoke, burned by crackling flames.

Into this true pica—not merely a blemish, but a distinguished disease—I too have fallen. For me, neither the splendor of the court, nor the management of a household, nor the integrity of my reputation, nor the vigor of my health can hold any weight compared to coals, poisons, soot, bellows, and furnaces. I am stronger than Hercules himself, for whom the Augean stable In Greek mythology, cleaning the filth-ridden stables of King Augeas was one of the Labors of Hercules must be perpetually cleaned; I am nearly blinded in both eyes by intense fire, infested by dangerous mercurial catarrhs Inflammation or discharge from the nose or throat, here attributed to inhaling mercury vapors, and entirely imbued with poison like a second Mithridates Mithridates VI of Pontus, who allegedly made himself immune to poisons by taking small, non-lethal doses. Deprived of all social standing and pleasure, I am in my mind a Croesus A king of Lydia famous for his legendary wealth, but in my purse... original: "Irus." Becher uses the literary device of a "catchword" at the bottom of the page to complete the sentence: "a Croesus in mind, an Irus [a famous beggar in Homer's Odyssey] in purse." This contrasts his intellectual richness with his financial poverty.