Chemical Letters to Excellent Philosophers and Physicians in Germany

continues from previous page: ...to the crowd do not require more than an ounce of pure gold, and are a matter of vanity. In a certain little book original: "libello quodam", which they attribute to the author Paracelsus, in which four besses two-thirds of a unit or marks are demanded, it requires the acumen of philosophers and a true and not insignificant knowledge of natural things, which cannot be found in those who have deserted the shoemaker’s trade. Your Excellencies, most learned men, just as you feel clearly about true Chymia Chemistry/Alchemy, and, following the imitation of great Kings and most praiseworthy Republics, do not turn away from its professors but embrace them with favor, so I am persuaded and have decided in my mind that you are most alien to impostors and that you carry about this considered opinion: that an art should not be stripped of its honor, even though it is treated most poorly by Paracelsian ashes referring to the dregs or low-quality followers of Paracelsus. Indeed, I have labored in it as much as other studies have permitted. But the more I turn it over, the more it smiles upon me, to such an extent that I have been led to adapt its precepts to the form of perfect sciences and to illustrate it with the Aristotelian constitution of arts and the Ramean method. I have seen, indeed, how obscurely, perplexedly, and corruptly Paracelsus described it. It has been explained limb by limb and handed down in a scattered way by true philosophers. For in one place, he teaches only about Chrysurgia the art of working in gold. Elsewhere, about