Marengus — Secrets of Chemical Pallas Revealed, ca. 1700

to clean them. Dry them, and then place them in the mill and operate as was said above.

The fixation of volatile gold or silver extracted from ores

Similarly, it should be observed that if the gold or silver extracted from the ores with mercury is volatile, a portion of the mercury can be filtered through the leather bag. However, leave some part of it with the volatile silver or gold. By decocting and fixing them together, you will have fixed gold, even with an increase, because some part of the mercury will be fixed along with it. Or you may do it this way, but first you must have fixed saltpeter. You shall fix it thus. ℞ Take purged saltpeter and separate its spirit from it by a retort. From the capite mortuo dead head or residue, extract whatever can be extracted with rainwater at a light heat. Afterward, by evaporating the water, you will have fixed saltpeter. If you wish, you can later reunite it with itself by parts and coagulate it together with a light heat. Then mix it with the said volatile gold or silver, and with that part of the mercury and the said fixed saltpeter. Cimenta Cement or heat in a closed container for six hours with a light fire, then a stronger one. You will have fixed matter with an increase, because some part of the mercury will also be fixed. Afterward, wash the fixed matter, dry it, and melt it. Note here that with the said saltpeter you can fix many compositions or mixtures made of gold and common mercury by amalgamating everything together with the fixed saltpeter and decocting it, as you can easily gather from what is to be said.

Whether imperfect metals can be reduced to the perfection of gold or silver by art.

Although I take it as certain that gold cannot be made by the ingenuity of art in the same way it is produced in the bowels of the earth; for we cannot have those vapors, those exhalations, and those breaths from which mercury and the sulfur of metals are composed in the bowels of the earth. Just as it is not in our hand to have that earth

to which sulfur and mercury are mixed and adhered in the bowels of the earth. With this earth they are glued together, and through long concoctions, they finally emerge as metals.

I also judge it certain that gold or silver cannot be made from foreign things. Nothing can be composed except from things of its own nature and its own species. A lion is certainly not generated from the sperm of a horse, nor is the seed of a lion able to generate a horse. Therefore, the seed of metal is necessary to form metal. The question, therefore, proceeds only in this sense: whether by the industry of human ingenuity, mercury and the other imperfect metals can be so perfected that they are transmuted into perfect gold or silver.

Some think this is impossible, both because metals in their being, whether perfect or imperfect, are already ultimately completed. They no longer exist in potential to acquire the perfection of gold or silver. Also, because we do not have at hand that which imperfect metals lack to be perfected into gold or silver. For where do we have perfect Mercury? Where is the required metallic sulfur? Where is the suitable matter? And how do we know the proportioned measure of the mixture of the said components required by nature? Finally, because even though Princes, Kings, and Emperors do not lack money for expenses, nor the most skillful workers for labor, nor books or manuscripts of distinguished philosophers treating of such transmutation, yet we do not know for certain, nor do we see any of them have arrived at the said transmutation of imperfect metal or mercury into gold. Indeed, not even Solomon himself, a most wise man and one adorned in the first rank with the knowledge of natural things, performed this transmutation. For it is read of him that for the building and adorning of the Temple, he sent to foreign provinces so that a great abundance of gold might be transmitted to him.