On the Art of Fermentation

I am more uncertain than before. WIGLEBIUS ³) denies the truth of the gold-making art, following others, whereas among the recent ones, SCHROEDERUS, SEMLERUS, ⁴) and BEIREISIUS, etc., affirm it; they prove by experiments that this art is neither vain, slippery, nor false, as many proponents of the contrary opinion have contended, and they establish the credibility of the denied matter by new metals themselves. But I, who am a Davus, not an Oedipus, leave the settlement of that dispute to those more experienced than I, desiring to be made more certain by the thing itself, by facts, and by my own eyes, through the initiated. For the gold-makers I had known—exceedingly rich in their own persuasion—I have not rarely found to be poorer than Irus, begging alms from others. I truly consider it a slippery and uncertain art, which six hundred times over has sold smoke for gold and a cloud for Juno to its devotees. But let us dismiss these matters.

There exists in libraries ⁵) a great abundance of writers on chrysopoeia (gold-making), concerning the integrity and falsehood of whom...

3. Hist. crit. Untersuch. d. Alchymie, Weim. 1777. Having read the writers on chrysopoeia, whom I had shared with him in Latin, he maintains that this art is almost entirely contained in poorly understood metallurgical works and the sophistic art of coloring copper.

4. Published at Jena, 1777. In Lecture 1 on STEPHANUS of Alexandria, on chrysopoeia, in Greek and Latin, I warned of certain things against SCHROEDERUS, a professor at Marburg; having been warned myself by SEMLERUS, a theologian of Halle, I learned through letters that he knew well that great art, the theion hydor (divine water), mercurial water, etc. This man died rich in knowledge but poor in art; yet BEIREISIUS, a professor of medicine at Helmstedt, claimed this divine and arcane art for himself everywhere, and from the chair showed his students chemical gold, being, as it is said, very wealthy through his art. How much emptiness there is in human affairs, and how diverse is the fortune of gold-makers in finding and possessing the stone! Not all may go to Corinth; clearly, the profane may not enter the inner sanctums of the divine art!

5. REINES. Var. Lect. II. 5. p. 155. The codex which he used, under the auspices and at the expense of Duke IOANNES GUILIELMUS of Altenburg...