Miscellanea Alchemica XXXII

Collection of five alchemical works: in French. On fol. 17v there is a symbolical pen drawn 'Ordre et suite des opérations'. Notes: No. 1 At the end of the text is a note by the compiler: 'Cet ouvrage est traduit de l'Arabe d'après un manuscrit trouvé à Constantinople. C'est le même dont parle le Cosmopolite dans ses lettres comme d'un traité unique ainsi que celui intitulé 'Le passage de la Mer rougé, lesquels il dit avoir copié ...' This reference is to the Epistola II of the 'Apographum Epistolarum hactenus ineditarum M. Sendivogii' in Mangetus: 'Bibliotheca chemica curiosa', 1702, Vol. II, p. 493. These letters are probably spurious [cf. Ferguson, 'Bibliotheca Chemica', Vol. II, p. 369]. No. 2 Another copy of this alchemical poem is recorded in W. J. Wilson's 'Catalogue of Latin and vernacular Alchemical MSS. in the United States and Canada' 1939 ['Osiris' Vol. VI] as No. 66. It is in the Library of Congress, Washington, entered as 'MS. Div. acc 5644' and is part of a larger MS. It begins 'Loué soit à jamais un seul Dieu tout puissant' and ends 'La Grâce du très haut et la pierre parfaite'. No. 3 The original German version is entered in Ferguson, op. cit, Vol. I, p. 358, and this translation is in abridged form. On the first leaf is a Table of contents signed 'P. Morin' in which the second work has for title 'Manne Terrestre venant du Ciel sur les enfants de Science'. The last page in the volume is signed 'Paul Morin', by a 19th century hand.

Early 19th century

1 volume 89 ff. 4to. 19 1/2 × 14 cm. Vellum covers from a part of a late 17th cent. French legal document. Lower half of the last leaf cut away, and repaired: margins slightly cropped. A foliation has been added in pencil.

Purchased 1936.

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).