Acts of the Munich Chymical Laboratory, or Two Books of Subterranean Physics

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Original title: Actorum Laboratorii Chymici Monacensis, seu Physicae Subterraneae Libri Duo A Latin natural-philosophical and chymical treatise in two books, issued as the acts of the Munich court laboratory, the first treating the genesis of subterranean things and the second their special nature and resolution. Rejecting both the Aristotelian elements and salt, sulphur and mercury taken as substances, Becher explains earths, stones, salts and above all metals as generated from three material earths — a first vitrifiable and lapidifying earth, a second fatty and combustible earth (terra pinguis, improperly called sulphur), and a third fluid or mercurifying earth, improperly called Mercury. Transformations are analysed through mixture, dissolution, rarefaction, condensation, fermentation, putrefaction and liquefaction, with the governing standard that no one truly knows the mixture of subterranean things who cannot, given their principles, produce metals above ground by art. Each chapter offers a numbered synopsis followed by a text keyed by marginal glosses, and the work draws on first-hand laboratory trials, assays and named witnesses. It extends into medicine (a universal being proposed as remedy), a defence of metallic transmutation addressed to Emperor Leopold I by reasons and experiments, and cameralist proposals for mines worked above ground, a bank, and public revenue without usury or taxation. Three separately issued supplements were later attached: an experimental demonstration of artificial and instantaneous metallic generation and transmutation (1671, also answering Werner Rolfinck), chymical theses on the truth and possibility of transmutation (1675), and a report on a perpetual sand-mine (1680). 👉 Read our introductory primer, full report, and finding guide here 📜 View the original source file This text was transcribed and translated as part of the ExLatinis project—an effort by Leo to make English translations of every published text in Latin in early modern Europe (between 1450 and 1750) available to the public for free online.

• Read our introductory primer, full report, and finding guide here
• View the original source file

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12 Y.a. 22 A 34