Alchemy: 18th cent.

Collection of notes and extracts chiefly from 17th cent. German alchemical writings: including 231 numbered, and a few other, alchemical processes. Some entries are in Latin. Pen-drawings of alchemical apparatus on pp. 121, 273, 274, 282: and of symbolic figures on pp. 1 and 333. Headings in green or red: text within red rules. The latest work quoted which can be dated with any certainty seems to be found on p. 295, where there are extracts from the 'Concordantia Philosophorum' by the enigmatic Ehrd von Naxagoras, which was published at Breslau in 1712. P. 393 contains 'Ein verborgener aber geistlischer Process' in cipher, with a holograph decipherment by Julius Kohn [ -1934].

c. 1720

1 volume 1 l. + 343 pp. + 8 ll. 8vo. 20 x 13 cm. Original vellum covers from a leaf of an early 15th cent. Service Book.

Purchased at Sotheby's 28/1/1935, Lot 25 (part).

Database description transcribed from S.A.J. Moorat, Catalogue of Western Manuscripts on Medicine and Science in the Wellcome Historical Medical Library (London: Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, 1962-1973).

Pasted inside the lower cover is an engraved armorial book-plate 'Ad Bibliothecam Instituti Medici Senckenbergiani' (i.e. Johann Christian Senckenberg [1707-1772]). From the Julius Kohn Library.