Miscellanea Alchemica VII

Collection of short alchemical works, extracts and receipts: in Italian and Latin. Written in a very neat script, by the same scribe throughout. Illustrated with II symbolic water-colour drawings, and 8 pen-drawings of circular figures for the metals: and by 5 water-colour drawings of alchemical apparatus-one pasted in (fol. 3v). There are also rough pencil drawings on fol. 66' (symbolic), on fol. 78 (apparatus). Besides these there are a few small drawing of apparatus in the margins. On the verso of the last leaf is a two-line inscription: 'Il tedesco di Roma fa potabile con aqua di Vetriolo retinficato piu uolte./La franze fa con argento fondendolo, con orpimento e chioui da caualli'.

1584-1589

1 volume I bl. l. +78 ff. + 1 l. 4to. 22 1/2 x 16 1/2 cm. Original vellum binding.

Purchased 1919.

No. 3 has not been identified, but it is not an Italian version of Georg Aurbach's 'Hortus Divitiarum'. Both as to illustrations and text it resembles the MS. (Vat. Reg. lat. 1278) described by Carbonelli in his 'Sulle fonti storiche della Chimica, etc.', Rome 1925, pp. 71-83, where the enigmatic 'Frater Elias' is suggested as the Author.

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).