Text.BP190.A1r/Translation

B.G. Londrada a Portu, in Aquitaine:

Apologetic Preface on the book of Paracelsian experiments, in which it's argued that the bodies of the sick, filled with the seeds of diseases, can hardly be healed without metallic medicines. This is in opposition to the writings of some men who deny that metals can in any way be beneficial to human nature.

In the Holy Scriptures, dear reader, among other laws, we find this one full of Christian love: If you see your neighbor's donkey or ox wandering, you must return it to its owner. By this, the eternal God wanted to establish mutual love among us and confirm it with the clearest evidence. Thus, the divine laws command us to take care of our adversaries' straying livestock. How much more, then, do they want us to ward off and turn away the miserable accidents and dangers to the bodies and health of our friends? Therefore, when I understood the errors of many of our time's doctors along with Theophrastus Paracelsus and other distinguished men, I began to think about how I could become a participant in true medicine, which is derived from the light of nature and not from the darkness of pagan writings. I concluded that I needed to travel, to approach remote places, and to seek out arts from everywhere: not to hope and wait for them idly at home. So, I prepared myself for the journey and through travels and labors, I investigated and learned things that I cannot keep silent about out of Christian love: to bring back the wandering sons of doctrine to the path, explaining my journey and labors, excusing and defending those who are today subjected to hatred by the admirers of Pagan medicine, whose deceptions I will also try to expose in part, where I will indicate what genuine medicine enthusiasts can expect from me in the future. And which truly medical books collected from everywhere by me, out of mercy for those who are lost, I am going to share for the public benefit. In the meantime, it's necessary to avoid the hatred of the masses, from me and other lovers of spagyric science, and to properly respond to adversaries. Their perversity and malice are such that they annihilate, reject, and condemn the discoveries of others with pompous words, which they notice they could use with some success and profit. Meanwhile, they claim the due praises of the authors for themselves, and with lying theft, they strip the inventors of the arts of their honors, a cunning caution stemming from the ancient serpent's deceptions. For when testimonies are heard everywhere (known to barbers and quacks) about some unusual cures of the most serious diseases, which are accomplished through the benefit of tinctures and spirits of vegetables and minerals, by the art and industry of those whom the common people today call Chemists or Alchemists, they immediately oppose them, shouting that charcoal burners (a derogatory term for alchemists) can achieve nothing. But with their poisonous remedies, they kill all who entrust themselves to their care: such deceivers should be banned from the republics; their extractions, preparations, and spirits are too diluted and subtle to be of any use; the spirit of vitriol is poison, the essence of antimony and mercury is nothing, the extraction of sulfur is nothing, the liquor of gold is nothing, and in short, everything is contrary to human nature and more to be avoided than the gaze of a basilisk. Meanwhile, like sneaky and cunning thieves, they secretly snatch from the chemists, who endure the force of fire night and day with great labor, fish out medical secrets, and coax out promises, secretly capturing what is commonly prohibited as poisons, to then sell as their own. And with such impious injustice, they divert grace and favor, praise, rewards, and remunerations from people to themselves: all of which, otherwise, by legitimate and utmost right, are owed to those who seek such things in natural matters with sweat, vigilance, and clever investigation, by the art of Vulcan, and make them common for public use. Not only this, but they also publish huge volumes filled with nonsense, lies, and sophistries. Trying to suppress light with darkness and truth with lies, and the most clear and practical worker, established by truth itself, they try to oppress, overturn, and erase with a vain, fabricated, and from the subtle brain derived theory.

I tell you, splendid Orator, who tear apart Paracelsus, how can you ever hope to destroy his work with frivolous words and refute practical experience with theory? Are you such a great doctor that you do not realize you only progress as much as you achieve through actual work? Paracelsus teaches that epilepsy should be treated with the spirit of vitriol, and he has proven it, showing the work itself every day: prove the opposite if you can, and cure the same with pills, syrups, and electuaries, then you will have won. It is not enough to prove with those reasons that metallic medicine does not suit human nature, nor that metals can be prepared in such a way as to heal. Do you deny what is actually achieved and can be seen with your own eyes? It is shameful to be ignorant of what everyone can know. Undoubtedly, you have heard of dangerous diseases being cured with metallic tinctures, even those prepared illegitimately by counterfeit Theophrastians, like antimony glass, which eradicates feverish impurities from the root, albeit with great depletion of strength, yet it heals. Even if we do not approve of those dangerous treatments, and so on for many others. Now, if improperly prepared minerals can do this, what do you think if they are properly prepared and purified from poison? And how can you in good conscience reject what you have no knowledge of? It is not enough to assert something unless it is supported by probable and well-founded reasons. Everyone wants to critique Paracelsus: it is easier to criticize than to emulate him, as everyone wants to appear and be considered wiser than others, yet no one wants to learn from others. I say, any of the Theophrastians who only brings coals to the work can show you the three principles of Theophrastic medicine right before your eyes. Have you tasted the sharpest salt, the sweetest oil, and the balm, the most pleasant liquor? All of which you have not yet sensed in any created things, the spirits of metals, in which lies the medicine, cannot be investigated in any way, nor can what strength and affinity they have with human nature be understood, except through fire. Just as the smoke of mercury was first shown by fire to be poisonous to human nature, no subtle speculation needed. But you have never handled coals, nor can you extract the slightest balm from plants. Therefore, not knowing what metallic medicine is, you cannot conjecture about it. Thus, you judge unknown things as a blind man judges colors. Is it not foolish to write against something and not first understand it well? Indeed, when those devoted to Paracelsian discipline realize you have no stronger weapons than what you have so far gathered, they conclude you are more likely to confirm and establish Paracelsian medicine than to refute it. It is not enough to call something false unless better and more probable alternatives are presented. Hence, it is clear that you indeed nurture a hidden ignorance of natural things. What? Are you such great Physicians and Philosophers? How are the powers of drugs hidden from you? Do you not come close to Empirics, whom you reject with immense pride and pretense of knowledge? When you say, "For a doctor is not a Chemist, even if he were the greatest; but one who has learned to make and use remedies for diseases with judgment and reason. For in these lies the greatest praise and glory for the doctor, and pure health for the patient." How cold and rational this man is, a doctor who prepares remedies with reason, not with his own hands. A doctor is one who purifies his own medicines from poison with his own hands and applies them with keen judgment to specific diseases, so that the root of the disease is eradicated. Therefore, theory and practice, reason and work must come together. Judgment without practice is barren. Tell me, how does it happen that mercury resists venereal disease and the evil of scabies? Why do you instruct the miserable sick to be anointed with mercury, as shepherds anoint their sheep? How is it, I ask, that mercury is the best specific against these diseases? Do you deny that metals contribute significantly to curing diseases? Why do you instruct lepers to swallow gold? When you cook it in chicken broths, why do you mix leaf gold into pills and electuaries? You are well aware that the onslaught of leprosy has often been checked, preventing it from breaking out on the skin's surface, by swallowing raw gold. Therefore, if gold can do this, wouldn't the spirits of gold, freed from their grossness, do the same? If you do not want to believe Theophrastus that the cure for the most dangerous diseases lies in metals, at least believe those who lived before Paracelsus, among whom Arnaldus of Villanova is foremost. He says in his book "On the Preservation of Youth" that pearls or dissolved pearls strengthen the natural heat, are good for the heart and for those who are fearful, and they especially clarify the blood of the heart: as many diseases have been cured by these. For there is a salt from the mineral which the wise have named the animal stone, others call it mineral chifir, and the whole art of preparation is that it be dissolved into the purest and most drinkable water, with substances that do not destroy its property. This is what Arnaldus says, who speaks not of crushing but of dissolving: but why do I bring this up? Clearly, to show that you are being defeated by your own sword: you use non-perforated pearls, corals, gems in your electuaries, and in broths you crush them into powder. You indeed sense the healing power in gems, but like bad cooks and clumsy women, when partridges or hares fall into their hands, they stuff them with herbs and cook them in water. So you crush pearls which should rather be dissolved. Even if you made copper powder, you would achieve nothing: but as you ingest it, so you see it exit again. Hence, the laws of chemical preparations are necessarily introduced into medicine, which you and its practitioners hate worse than snakes and dogs. What more? If you still refuse to concede that the greatest cures for diseases lie in minerals, listen to Andrea Mattioli in the fourth book of his letters, saying, "The bodies of the sick, filled with the seeds of diseases, can hardly be healed without metallic medicines." And in his treatise on antimony, he says, "Antimony purges the diseases of the body no less than metals do from their superfluities." This most learned man understood this, even though he never knew the true preparation of antimony. Similarly, he highly values drinkable gold, whose preparation, as Mattioli himself used, I will recount for you, so you are not ignorant. He says gold, purified two or three times through antimony and reduced to the thinnest sheets, and hung in a suitable vessel so that the sheets do not touch each other, should be burned and calcined in a properly prepared furnace for half a year: it must withstand the most intense fire until finally the gold sheets, taken out and exposed to the open and cooler air, let a certain oily moisture flow from them, dissolving into a sweet-tasting red color. From this, he extracted two ounces of oil: from that which was not so well burned, the liquid flowed less readily: he used to pour in rectified spirit of wine several times, and so long and until all that red color was extracted. You will refine these spirits or the essence of wine very subtly if you place it in a glass cucurbit under an alembic set up to receive it in the coldest water or snow-cooled spring water, and you will cover the cap with a linen cloth soaked in warm water all around, for those finer parts are carried upwards, leaving the watery parts at the bottom. The calcined gold, infused several times with the spirit of wine and distilled again through an alembic, leaves behind a reddish liquid. That doctor used to first cleanse the body, shave, and warm the crown of the head, then pour one dram of it and give the same amount to drink in a potion for serious illnesses, and so with pure silver for deadly diseases, and likewise with other metals. For when properly prepared, they dissolve because they are salts. This man has many mineral medicines that were never known to Galen or Hippocrates but were brought to light by our Theophrastus Paracelsus, about whom you, as a doctor and great philosopher, write imprudently in title only. Do you think everything is impossible for others that you cannot achieve or surpass with your divine wisdom? What will you say to this? I know a man who can cure venereal disease within three days or at most six days with his mineral remedy, not the one involving oil of vitriol but another far superior, which will not reach you unless you abandon your stubbornness and stop making Paracelsians hated and suspected by the public and nobility, and depriving them of the fruits of their just labors. You ask, what have you achieved? What have you discovered? Where do you expect praise and benefit? We ask the same of you: what have you discovered that has refined medicine? We introduced essences, oils, balsams, and salts into medicine, all products of the alchemical school. And it is well known how much light has been added to medicine through proper distillation alone, and how much benefit it has brought to the sick, as daily experience teaches. Meanwhile, if you are so averse to labor, at least spare our reputation. But what's surprising? Hasn't it always been the case that the best efforts are often received poorly and rewarded inadequately? Every good person aimed at virtue, nobility, and loyalty knows the reward they often receive for their fidelity and for uncovering the truth. Thus, some, when they can do no more, accuse nature's investigators of mendicancy and fill the ears of the common people with the most beautiful lies, always harping on the dangers and abuses from the counterfeit and dangerous treatments of Paracelsians, judging everything (out of contempt for them) as poverty, indignity, and worthlessness. But they will soon escape the poverty they willingly undertake, as the nature of things becomes more and more known to people day by day, and as cures for unusual and severe diseases are finally discovered, which, due to your laziness, would cause all those afflicted to die if God, in His mercy, did not provide healing remedies through even the most despised of men towards the end of the world. Lepers, gout sufferers, consumptives, epileptics, those infected with venereal disease, devoured by cancer, eaten away by fistulas and lupus, paralyzed by stroke, afflicted by epidemic diseases and plague, cast down to the underworld—these, I say, and many more whom you have buried alive like executioners through your ignorance and the worst corruptible potions and purgations, will summon and accuse you in court, the poor whom you have bled dry, whose blood they will demand in exchange for their lost health and depleted wealth. Furthermore, what madness and cruel folly is this? During a plague, you confine the first afflicted people to their homes, mark their doors, detain them in prison, strangle them with care and solitude, and kill them with hunger. Is this how the plague should be treated? Do you not think that everyone can be infected from the same source as the first infected person? Why not protect the healthy with antidotes, especially since you claim to be such excellent doctors, when almost all your remedies have proven ineffective against this disease? Thus, you do not love your neighbor as yourself; do you not value life enough to risk it for a fellow being? For there is never a time when companionship, conversation, consolation, and assistance are more needed than during a plague. Oh, what punishment you have brought upon yourselves! You abandon friends and relatives, isolate and cast them out as if into exile, leaving them where solitude itself was more violent than the disease and killed with grief those whom the disease did not kill. What, I ask, is true and Christian friendship? Does not the complaint of the sick move you to compassion? When I was healthy, you were my friend, you visited me, you helped me; when I am sick, you shudder and flee from me, you laughed with me when fortune smiled. Now, when I weep and seek comfort anxiously, you deny it. What does it mean to visit and to help? You not only do not help, but you even persuade rulers to close places and paths to travelers. You should eagerly relieve their suffering, willingly go to them, and prove your skill. But at the onset of plague, you are the first to panic, to shudder, to despair. The sick are entrusted to you as if they were children and infants; you should care for them with diligent treatment (as parents care for their sick children), not bleed them of gold. Then the patient would smile at you if you indeed nurtured his feeble life with gentle balm and refreshment. Then he would rejoice at your sight, calling you father. Every genuine doctor must necessarily prepare the medicines with his own hand correctly; not leave it to an inexperienced cook, not fill huge volumes with formulas of recipes, with which I see students of medicine overwhelmed and so entangled that they almost collapse and die under the heavy weight of these recipes. Medicine is not learned this way, but through the labors of the hands and practical work, where Vulcan reveals new things every day, and nature hands over to its steward the sweetest remedies, better and better purified from superfluities each day. You expect a rich harvest without first plowing and sowing; you expect knowledge of the hidden powers of nature without first investigating and laboring with fire, when the majority of you are delicate and lazy; and he who has been idle in operations approaches practice as if blind. If you did not so abhor the art of Alchemy, you would learn to separate the pure from the impure, which causes the corruption of things, through long digestions, distillations, cohobations, rendering the medicine pure and sincere before administering it to the patient. Then, touching the patient's nature, it would be quickly restored, as the weak stomach cannot concoct, digest, and separate thick substances. But great Lords and Doctors do not want to be disciples and novices, just as it is difficult for an old dog to get used to leashes and hunting, who, like one who gnaws at chains and shows biting teeth rather than allow himself to be controlled, so too you would rather openly contradict the truth, bark and bite at it with a dog's voice, than admit your errors. What? Should it be proper for chemists, because of the legitimate preparations of medicines, which you are ignorant of, and because they follow hard labor, which you flee from, to be considered beggars, old, and ragged? Do you not finally consider that the common people will notice the frauds? You have been sufficiently warned by many doctors of medicine, for whom childish treatments were not satisfactory, among whom is Conrad Gesner and many others, who, if they had survived, would have certainly and definitively renounced your feigned art. Johannes Woz of Cologne, who was prominent in 1510, also sharply criticized the doctors of his time. In his works, he discusses metallic medicines and quintessences very clearly and beautifully, showing their use in plagues and in the labyrinth of medical practices. What will you respond to those things that Lord Gorræus praised so highly in the fifth chapter of "On the Extraction of the Quintessence from Herbs," in his commentaries, where he greatly extolled metallic medicines and used them, making light of yours? He said, "The distillations of waters from herbs and other such things, which apothecaries boast of, are almost of no strength, since they are nothing but the phlegm of the substance, whose principal liquid consists of oil and salt." But to kindle in you a spark of desire for the marvelous knowledge of properties, I will mention Jean Fernel of Amiens, in the second book of "On the Hidden Causes of Things," chapter XVIII. He says, "Indeed, the opinion of that fusible and metallic philosophy, alchemy (as indeed of many), with a long journey, when I was engaged in my early studies, I used a very experienced teacher and extracted from each type of plants and living beings truly various substances. First indeed water, and more abundant if the plant was thriving, scantier if it was withering. Then oil, not indeed the thick and dirty kind that is pressed out by our methods, but the work of a superior art, which does not become rancid or easily corrupt over time. This oil is of two kinds, one thin and whitish, the other drier and reddish, etc." He continues, "At your encouragement, I will speak, not to reveal this entire treasure, but to teach how truly it exists. And let not the unusual name and obscurity, which the fathers have covered with shadow and enigma, offend you; I will bring it forth into the open and into the clearest light in its place." But you cannot bear good advice, just as you cannot now bear the most learned and excellent men, nor do you wish to tolerate Lord Physician Gerard Dorn, whom God has undoubtedly raised up for us. This most excellent man is worthy of eternal memory because, through no injury or danger, he made Paracelsus, who possesses some ancient gravity and authority, more illustrious in his latest writings, so that at least the sons of doctrine are well cared for. In defense of them, like a true soldier, he fights to the altar with both deed and word, and is a learned companion and assistant to that Physician, Joseph Quercetanus, who has merited extremely well in the field of medicine. In his writings, he revealed many splendid philosophical secrets to posterity and illuminated obscure spagyric medicines. He would have brought forth greater works into the light if not for the ingratitude of many, which closed off his generous sources, especially that of a certain apothecary who tries to criticize much in his writings, approving little, and knowing nothing better. Hence, it happens that all suffer loss due to the ingratitude of one.

Therefore, persevere in your virtue—
Drive the lazy drones from the hives:
Thus, your times will be redeemed with perpetual laurel.

In the meantime, we will add what we have found through many travels and labors, and have learned, asking our adversaries to not disdain or tear apart with insults if they themselves do not need it, nor to deter others who will gratefully receive our efforts, or to teach better themselves, while considering that something must be conceded and given to one who has exposed himself to so many dangers for the sake of the art of medicine. For when, after that slaughter and the madness of our Frenchmen, I went with Lord Charles de Chambray, Lord of Ponsay, to Italy, and from there explored Istria, Ragusa, Slavonia, Macedonia, and Byzantium, I devoted myself with tireless study to ascertain something certain about the philosopher's stone or chemical matters. However, I found no true philosophers anywhere, but pseudo-physicists and alchemists who had either no knowledge or a very superficial understanding of natural arts and preparations. Eventually (by God's will), I came across a very learned man named Daniel, a bishop in Dalmatia. To him, I sent a letter (which, along with his response sent to me later, I will someday publish), where many philosophical matters, not unpleasant to read, will be seen. After having sufficiently explored the eastern regions and collected nothing so certain in natural sciences, I set out towards Germany with the most gracious prince, the Vidame of Chartres, seriously dedicating myself to the study of spagyric medicine. I realized that kings and princes are deceived and mocked by those charlatans who sell their falsified and sophistic chemical arts, scraped together and begged from all corners, with a pompous appearance, fleecing princes of their money, leading to a great abundance of sophists and sophistic frauds arising daily. Because of these, not only does the highly praised art of alchemy suffer damage, get suppressed, and adulterated, and chemists themselves become disliked by everyone, wasting their life, time, and expenses on futile operations, but also a severe loss reverberates throughout the state. Many are such cunning deceivers that with feigned experience in chemical art, pretended friendship, and grand promises, they fraudulently extract arts from others, claim them as their own, value them at a great price, and sell them. Just as some charlatans once tricked me out of handwritten books with their deceptions and sold them for a large sum of money: it would be wise for states and the art of alchemy if such charlatans were restrained and punished by the authorities: thus, the disciples of the art would be less misled, and the true and sincere art would soon emerge from those sophist masks. Therefore, to provide students of the art with some symbol from me as well, by which they may advance this clearer science, I will soon (God willing) publish three books on the philosopher's stone written by various authors: the first extracted from a noble Briton with certain characters, in which all the enigmas of the philosophers are clearly explained, to which I will add two hundred certain and invincible, truly philosophical rules, by which those wandering and doubting about the material of the stone will be confirmed. The second is Johannes de Rouillachz from Piedmont, who discusses the mercury of the philosophers and how it is extracted, along with a letter of Johannes Pontanus of the same kind. There is also an excellent treatise by an unknown author that clarifies many doubts about that blessed medicine. Furthermore, since most nations, especially the Germans, write books in their own language, I too will write two books in the French language for those devoted to philosophy. In these books, I will philosophize about many preparations, many medicinal specifics tested by me and others, about various philosophers' elixirs, extractions of mercuries, from which mercurials, and many diverse dissolutions. I will add interpretations of various characters with which the books of the ancients and moderns are written to conceal the art. Also, the explanation of a certain alphabet without which the work can hardly be understood, and two treatises: one on the virtues of oils, both vegetable and metallic, and another on the salts and properties of many vegetables and minerals. To these, I will attach two treatises on philosophical minerals and on making vinegars, because if I see that this effort and labor of mine are approved by those devoted to the art, I will soon give more, which many desire with all their hearts. In the meantime, take this small work in good part. What we have done so far is addressed only to those who pursue spagyric medicine with hatred, who think nothing can be taught correctly and usefully in medicine unless it echoes the old lyre, as if nature itself were subordinate to Galen, as if all teachings of medical art must be drawn from pagans, and if they alone perfected the art and established it with solid arguments, why not refute those excellent men devoted to Theophrastus Paracelsus, among whom the great Petrus Severinus of Denmark is foremost, who in his "Idea" sufficiently revealed the invincible foundation of Paracelsian medicine. Why do you not respond to the "Monarchia Triadis" of the most learned Doctor of Physics, Gerard Dorn? Why do you not refute the volumes of the most illustrious Doctor Turneser, established by practical truth? To you who daily revisit Galen's teachings, weigh them with precise judgment, and give a place to Paracelsus, recognizing and practicing his preparations, I congratulate you: soon more will be published against the adversaries, which will bite them more effectively. In the meantime, defend the truth from injustice with work, word, and writings. Farewell.