The Pyrotechnic Philosophy, or a Chymiatric Course

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Original title: Philosophia pyrotechnica, seu cursus chymiatricus A Neo-Latin course of instruction in chemical medicine by a Scottish physician practising in Paris, printed by Jean Bessin near the Collège de Reims and issued in parts before appearing as a collected volume. Presenting itself as matter excerpted from the author's medical curriculum for the use of his auditors, it defines chymistry as an art created by the Most High and instituted in nature whose object is the separation of the pure from the impure, traces impurity in mixed bodies to the stain of original sin, and makes separation a duty of the physician's office. Organized in parts with dedications, censor's approbation and royal privilege, it combines a demonstrative apparatus of definitions, theorems, propositions and corollaries drawn more mathematico from Euclid and Proclus with cosmogony, a doctrine of exemplary causes and Platonic Ideas, an analysis of fire and the elements, matter theory and psychology, and practical chapters on furnaces, distillation, the tria prima of Salt, Sulphur and Mercury, salts and nitre, and mineral remedies including antimonial preparations, together with recipes, dosages, weighed trials, engraved plates and deferred natural-philosophical questions reserved for his hearers. 👉 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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Early European Books, Copyright 2012 ProQuest LLC. Images reproduced by courtesy of The Wellcome Trust, London. 1722/A