The Prosperity of Germany, Part Two

The regulus knocked out of the cooled mass will contain all the gold which joined itself from the arsenic, copper, antimony, and iron. The said regulus, either burned through saltpeter in a pot or through lead in a test and separated, will deliver all that gold which lay hidden in the said minerals. Whoever, however, desires to occupy himself with this labor for still greater profit will be able to add a little silver, roasted or calcined with common sulfur, to the copper which has been burned with arsenic, and to melt that together with the antimony and precipitate it into reguli with Mars iron. Thus, the silver will draw the gold from the arsenic to itself and affect the artisan with a greater emolument of separation. Note: If anyone should be less skilled in this operation, omitting the burning of the silver, he may add a little of the same to the regulus by fusion and make it pure with saltpeter, so that the gold which is in the regulus may join itself to the added silver and enrich it with no small augmentation, according as the minerals used for separation contained more or less gold. This labor, supplying food and clothing in abundance, requires an exercised operator, not a Farnerian a derogatory term for an incompetent or fraudulent alchemist brother of ignorance, born of sheep in the fatherland, to whom, and to those like him, entirely ignorant of pyrotechnic operations, I do not prescribe this labor, but only to those whom frequent exercise has rendered apt and suitable for undertaking such works with profit. Even if this operation may be less ingenious, it will not be for everyone to bring it to effect duly, which also impels me to be an author to everyone with this admonition of mine, so that he who is ignorant of how to treat fire may also desist from undertaking this labor and apply his mind to those things which do not flee his cognition, lest he transfer the blame of his errors, which must be imputed and ascribed to his own inexperience and rudeness, onto me, as if I had not written faithfully nor sufficiently openly. Indeed, I must confess that no little difficulty resides in that labor. But let him apply diligence, and to one imbued with the cognition of pyrotechnic operations, it will be easy to finish this very labor with no contemptible profit.