The Prosperity of Germany, Part Two

peter and purged by the aid of separation, and finally that which hid in those discarded minerals reveals itself with the greatest profit. But if anyone should desire an even greater perfection of operation, he must add some gold to the regulus instead of lead, and reduce it into scoriae by the addition of saltpeter, and separate it from the gold, whereby the added gold associates to itself the gold existing in the regulus and is increased by a much richer accession than if the regulus had been converted into scoriae with added lead. Nor will the scoriae themselves perish, since they are ignited by coals and precipitated, so that the regulus drawn by the saltpeter is dismissed and gathers itself at the bottom, and with the mass refrigerated, it is freed from the burden of scoriae. This regulus is then used with profit in other metallic operations, drawing out gold anew, as will be taught in the following. The remaining scoriae are nothing but fixed niter and are worthy of being reserved for the following work, which rightly and deservedly should be called the perpetual metallic art; thus nothing is lost at all, but all things are forced to bring their own profit.

This method of separating metals is therefore a most useful operation, abundantly sufficient for food and clothing. But if anyone perhaps abhors arsenic and antimony because of the poison in which they abound, with these omitted, he will be able to cement iron pregnant with gold with golden marcasite, melt it with antimony, and drive it down into reguli. For thus the volatile gold of the marcasite will also exhibit its utility, and an increment will be added to that which the iron and antimony concealed. In the lack of golden marcasite, that segregation alone which is made by antimony and iron will suffice, since that labor is also performed with no contemptible profit, even if the iron alone is gold-bearing and the antimony is devoid of it.

Such separation and extraction of gold from minerals and from viler and coarser metals would be a help to many who understand the operations of fire in some way, and yet are afflicted by grave poverty and straitened circumstances at home. For the said gold-bearing minerals are everywhere available in abundance, but because of their inconstancy and immaturity they cannot be treated by everyone, which is the cause that, as useless things, they lie neglected everywhere and serve the benefit of no one.