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ID	Title	Author	Corrected Date of Publication (TCP Date of Publication)	STC	Words	Pages
A61316	A brief examination and censure of several medicines of late years extol'd for universal remedies, and arcana's of the highest preparation ... namely, Lockyers pill, Hughes pouder, Constantines spirit of salt, with several other of that kind, by which the art of pyrotechny is in danger of being brought into reproach and contempt ... / by George Starkey ...	Starkey, George, 1627-1665.	1664 (1664)	Wing S5272; ESTC R457	17,837	46

A BRIEF Examination and Censure OF Several Medicines of late years Extol'd for Universal remedies and Arcana's of the highest preparation BEING Indeed some of them trivial toyes by mistake cryed up for what they are not others dangerous virulent venoms faslely commended for rare wonder-working mysteries Namely Lockyers pill Hughes pouder Constantines Spirit of Salt with several other of that kind by which the Art of Pyrotechny is in danger of being brought into Reproach and Contempt From the injury of which pretenders true Chymistry is vindicated and the disguise pluckt off from Counterfeit Artists who are discovered to be a pack of ignorant Sciolists and vain-glorious Boasters of what they know not nor can perform By George Starkey who is a Philosopher by the Fire Licensed September the 30. 1664. LONDON Printed for the Author 1664. A BRIEF Examination and Censure OF Several Medicines of late years Extoll'd for Universal remedies and Arcana's of the Highest preparation IN the year 1651. and continuing from that time till 1655. I began publickly to use in my Medicinal practise several succedaneous remedies for the Cure of Diseases acute especially of which in my Natures explication and Helmonts vindication as also in my Pyrotechny asserted and illustrated I gave a faithful account and my Medicines were grown famous without Bills or Books both in City and Countrey at last one Mr. Mathews prevailed with me so far as to impart unto him my middle way for preparation and correction of Vegetables in defect of he great Dissolvent of Helmont and Para●elsus namely by alcalizate Salts and oyls essential united together by a long digestion and reiterated imbibitions This way of preparation although a true natural way yet at the best and highest is but a succedaneous or middle process to that of the great Circulate and this by me communicated the most inferior of its kind as I have elsewhere more fully declared For first it was wholly Vegetable whereas by the same way Mineral Sulphurs might be extracted Corrected and Exalted and joyned with the Vegetable composition by which it would have been improved in vertue an hundred fold But secondly it was not by far the noblest Vegetable preparation which that way leads unto For I have upon occasion not onely made an union of the Salt and oyl but also circulated them into a true volatile Spirit and with them extracted Aromatick and Balsamick tinctures which being truely essentificated are by Paracelsus called Vina essata of which in my Pyrotechny asserted I have discoursed fully and plainly which Helmont speaks of in his Book of Fevers in these words He that knows how to turn the oyl of Cinnamon Cloves c. into the nature of a volatile Saline Spirit hath at command a powerful Medicine for the Asthma Consumption Palsey Apoplexy and inveterat Vertigo or swimming of the head c. which will perform as much as can be expected from any Vegetable remedy However as I elsewhere have written more at large that way of preparation is a true natural way and of very general use in the practice of Physick for frustra fit per plura quod fieri potest per pauciora multitudes of truculent diseases very violent and acute are by effectual abstersives safely speedily and pleasantly taken away without danger of relapse But where the disease respects the Spirits chiefly or where in acute diseases the Spirits are oppressed or violently inraged the vital spirits I mean there such purely defecated remedies are required that may insinuate themselves into and relieve the languishing fountain of life Otherwise a powerful abstersive especially if it have a pacative vertue mixt with it to pacifie the enraged Archeus will perform the desires of both Patient and Physitian in Surfeits Colds Coughs Fluxes Fevers Pleurisies tormenting gripes of wind in the Stomack or Bowels running pains in the joynts or limbs oppression of the Stomack want of Appetite Digestion Rest or the like And so far my pill communicated to Mr. Mathews is of general use that almost in any distemper that ordinarily afflicts the body it may be given with credit to the Physitian and Comfort to the Patient as in my vindication of this Pill from the unlearned Alchymist and all other pretenders I have sufficiently declared to which I remit the Reader as also to my Pyrotechny and Natures Explication for larger yea full satisfaction My Pill then which Mr Mathews challenged for many years is a true Correction of the lethal qualities of Opium in which is not onely an eminent pacative vertue but experience shows it to be admirably abstersive by both sweat and urine which abstersive quality is heightned and advanced by the Oyls and Salt as also by the addition of some or other abstersive simples as Hellebore black or white Asarum Briony c. which are also by the aforesaid Corrector of Oyl and Salt totally stript of all their malignity whose vertues being joyned together make an excellent Febrifuge and a singular remedy for Coughs and Fluxes Which preparation by much experience in these nine years since I taught Mr. Mathews to make it I have amended and advanced beyond credit yet the unlearned Alchymist making use of the press hath made his more ordinary Pill so famous in City and Countrey that the repute of the Author is swallowed up in the larger stream of his Credit and Fame Yea although those who know me and deal with me find so great difference in goodness between mine and his that they would scarce buy of that sort from me at any rate yet I finde that as long as they that learned of him and his Widow print every day Bills and Books and by advertisements in the news-News-book give notice far and near of their preparations if I be silent I shall spend my time in obscurity by which means people who never read my Books nor heard of me will not know me to be the Author so I shall lose the credit of my Secret nor perhaps will ever understand how much I have mended this preparation and in more difficult cases how far exceeding remedies I do and can prepare but thinking this to be the best that can be had the unlearned Alchymist foolishly boasting it beyond its limits of vertue will sit down either content with this inferior sort when far nobler may be had or hearken out after some other things which of late are grown famous but are indeed dangerous venoms as I shall by and by more at large set forth At the least this medicine being now fallen into many hands will as all things do of the like nature grow dayly worse and worse which as it will be a great loss to those that are concerned in the need of it so it will fall as an inevitable disgrace upon the Art and redound to my both dammage and discredit For Mr. Mathews was by me taught my most common way then in use which he did not follow with that Candor as he should and might but

calcined Potters clay and distilled by degrees of fire at first urged at last with the extream fire of reverberation and so continued till the Spirits be wholly drawn off This Spirit is of a pleasant sent very volatile ponderous tincted and exquisitely crid yet will not corrode common quicksilver though in sharpness it equal the most rectified oyl of Vitriol and in weight and is so volatile that you can no sooner open the glass but the fumes in form of a smoak will soon fill the room Whereas this spirit which lately is cryed up in City and Country is made of white Salt not so much as dryed from its moisture which by lying in the air it contracts The invention of drawing it as to the instrument was Glaubers which being of earth lets out all the subtle spirits giving onely the flegm which a small trial will demonstrate to any that is ingenious for let that spirit be rectified with a very gentle fire and all that is insipid thrown away for it is worth nothing else the residue of a whole pound will be so incredibly little that a man who hath once made the experiment would wonder at his own levity and vanity to be deluded by so palpable a trifle in a thing that concerns not his purse onely but his health and life also for by relying on this broken staffe for help opportunity of seeking out elsewhere is lost never to be recovered again and this damage at least is got by promised help where the thing on which the Patient relies for performance of what he expects and the Doctor promiseth cannot perform what it gives hopes of Such may well be called cruel promises where the life is ingaged and the effect in an ordinary way cannot nor will answer expectation Of this sort are several Chymical preparations as namely Elixir proprietatis the tincture of Corals the Magistery of Pearls c. which have onely the name of Paracelsus and Helmonts secrets but are not the things themselves Such is the potable gold boasted of by some in which is nothing of remark but the cheat of it and disapointment of expectation in him that useth it Of this sort of potable gold that testimony of Gideon Harvey may be very true that it hath no admirable vertue in it but by reason of its Corrosive spirits with which it is prepared it hath to his knowledge caused dysenteries c. which is no more then Helmont said before him to wit that in his Tyrociny he could by Corrosives make gold appear in the disguises of oyl Vitriol and a spirit yet he could never find in those preparations such vertues which the Adept Philosophers ascribe to the preparations of Gold extolled by them nay rather he found better effect in the decoction of some simple then herein But at last he perceived that gold without its true proper Corrosive is dead till I say it be radically penetrated by its Corrosive which as Paracelsus saith is truely more noble then the gold it self Nor is it impossible but Dr. Harvey may hereafter come to find another far more secret potable gold then any he hath seen yet which may have other vertues then that which he mentions with such deserved contempt Then he may have a far better est eem of Helmont then at present he manifests when the whimsies of his natural Theology little better then Scripture Atheism or Ethnick Divinity his Graphical descriptions of the several divisions of the Chaos his Metaphysical Dog-Cat with other pretty Chimera's about fire and the Elements shall by riper years be worm'd out of his brain then he may fall into a more serious consideration of his latter end set forth to him by the Emblems of his Deaths-head and flower-pot and at last perhaps prove a Sober Philosopher Till then I leave him for answer to what he hath vomited up in disgrace of Helmont to his further and more judicious reading of him his Exceptions being so empty and weak as to deserve no further answer and his Book of Archeology so pitifully idle as that it hath not the good luck of those Tractates which have of all others the worst fortune to contein so much in it of real value as to requite the Readers time that he spends in reading it But to leave Dr. Harvey and his potable gold and come to what we further intend namely to discover the abuses under which the Art of Pyrotechny grones and to disabuse the people who have been and are deluded by such empty bubbles in which besides a swelling outside there is nothing but air and vanity I shall in brief resume what I have said before and so conclude this my censure of unfaithful Chymical remedies they are all of them mistakes in art imposed on the credulous world for what they are not of which some are truculent and lethally dangerous where to wit dangerous subjects are wrought upon and the true preparation not understood by such Tyro's as too rashly adventure upon the work yet they extol the products to the heavens for the true secrets of the Adepti when indeed they are onely false names of rare Arcana's put upon real venoms where the preparation is not true nor the product safe such are Lockyers Pill Hugh's powder Mercurius vitae commonly now known by that name Aurum vitae c. with twenty severall impostures of the like nature Others are safe being of subjects in which lies no danger but for want of a due preparation trivial and sophisticate Such is Constantines Phlegme of Salt the common spirit of vitriol the common Elixir proprietatis Tincture of Coral Oyl of Amber yea what spirit or oyl is there that for gain sake is not adulterated or the preparation shuffled over where the true way of doing it is troublesom and difficult or perhaps not known Every Tyro at his first entrance on the art of Chymistry boasts himself straightway for a Colossus in Pyrotechny and will adventure upon the most hidden mysteries who knows not the keyes by which natures Cabinet is unlocked Hence it is that while many boast of high Arcana's and yet they and their secrets become at last deservedly contemptible others who have some particular remedy not usual with which more real good is done then with these great mysteries whose cruel danger makes them at last suspected by all and abhorred by them who know and have tried them they take this opportunity of extolling this rarity of theirs for the Apex of Chymical preparations Thus spirit of Harts-horn with some spirit of Soot with others called by the name of ignis vitae spirit of Dead mens bones with a third sort are ignorantly and unadvisedly commended as true Panpharmaca and so used by many whereas they are only urinous spirits and so abstersive of which that of Hartshorn is the best but nothing comparable to that spirit made of it by the circulated salt of Helmont and Paracelsus by which Hartshorn is turned into a lacteous spirit and will reach the principles of our constitution by which means such notable spirits do strengthen the balsom of life are powerfully renovative and restoring decayed strength and the drooping vital spirits Of this sort are Crabs eys Pearl and the stones of vegetables and animals the shells also of Crabs and fishes yet so as that there are kinds and degrees of goodness among them but their preparation must be performed by a true Key or agent and not according to the slender skill of an illiterate Tyro or ignorant Sciolist In doing which the concrets must be resolved by a spontaneous retrograde solution and the primitive lactiform liquor separated totally from the dissolvent which is the highest advancement those concretes can be brought to in which are wonderful excellencies hidden for such who have an inclination to nephritick Coaagulations of gravel and stranguretical muccous viscidities in the bladder which inclination though old and obstinate such Arcana's remove and by a restoring vertue confirm the Kidnies and bladder in their pacified state to the infinite comfort of the patient and credit of the Physitian Of these and many other true secrets I shall God willing put forth a discourse intituled Helmont revived as a forerunner to which it was necessary to send forth this tractate to undeceive the world who have long been abused with adulterate rascal preparations instead of true Chymical Arcana's and medicines to the injury of deluded patients and disgrace of the Art which reproach I doubt not but these lines of mine will for the future wipe off and remove A Conclusion to the Sons of Art and all Ingenious Readers THis for the honour of the Art of Pyrotechny in vindicating its reputation from the reproach cast on it by Pseudochymists I thought necessary to send into the world as a forerunner of other plain full and faithful tractates which shall be onely didacticall and instructive of which the first which I intend shall follow this is a discovery of the two Keyes of Pyrotechny Viz the Liquor Alchahest and its succedaneum the true Spirit of Salt of Tartar to which I shall add by way of appendix the Anatomies of Amber Antimony Mercury and Saturn by way of short essayes not to anticipate or prejudice my Pyrotechny Triumphing which is a large Volume Thus at present Reader I shall take leave of thee and recommend both my own and thy studie and pains to his blessing who onely can make successful what we enterprize and discover truth to the studious and serious searcher after Natures secrets and shall subscribe myself thy faithful friend Monitor Instructer and Brother George Starkey known by the title of Philosopher by the fire FINIS