Volume 1

Professional anecdotes, or ana of medical literature.

Date:
1825
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: Professional anecdotes, or ana of medical literature. Source: Wellcome Collection.

    296/320 (page 276)
    270 DR. JOHN SEGER WEIDENFELD. This very learned physician was deeply versed in alchemical reading, and author of a work “ De Secretis Adeptorumin which the men - strua or agents of the alchemists are arranged in genera, and their preparations related in the words of the original, with explanatory notes; thus exhibiting one of the earliest specimens of a regular classification of chemical substances, and affording a key to the mysterious works of the alchemists of the school of Aquinas. As it is also a primary object in this excellent but now neglected work, to show the prepara- tion of the philosophic spirit of wine, and the presence of it, or the materials from which it is made, in every menstruum of the adepts, the author is supposed to have been the person who, under the assumed name of Frobenius, communicated the method of making ether to the Royal Society. The following is a copy of an original letter of his to Mr. Nutkins, at Worsley Hall, preserved in the British Museum, amongst Dr. Birch’s MSS., and is a specimen of the reasoning used by the alchemists, when they en- deavoured to procure a person to assist them in their speculations. “ I thank you for your kind offer expressed in your letter, and you may assure yourself that, on my part, I shall never neglect any opportunity to return you any service, which shall fall within the compass of my power.