Three Books on Gold

ON POTABLE GOLD

Not Depending on the

Principal Nobility of the Metal Itself.

Chapter IIII.

These things I have touched upon not by decreeing, but by debating, since some also say that they use potable gold to take away all sicknesses, to preserve health, and to prolong life as much as is permitted by the powers of nature. But I, while I would not deny it, would thus assert that the very thing can be brought into controversy by those who are skilled in contradicting. Perhaps they will say that it is well established among those who offer gold that it is indeed not properly drunk, but [that] a more subtle and purer portion of it, marked by the name of a combined essence, [is]. But regarding the fifth essence of superior bodies themselves, since many wars have been fought between the greatest masters of philosophy, whose soldiers are still clashing—concerning on whose side the victory stood—the Platonists and the Peripatetic schools certainly do not agree, the leader of which [Aristotle] they contend preferred that fifth nature rather than proved it, and [that it has] no rights without the admission of five suppositions; and if they say it is not granted in the heavens, will it be granted to those things which are coalesced from elements under the heavens? For whether from honey, or from sulfur and hydrargyrum,