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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

censure of noble Helmont concerning them to wit that Antimony so long as it causeth vomits and Mercury while it may be revived and that it will easily be so long as its infamous salivative Venome remaines uncorrected are not remedies fit for an honest man to use 3. Thirdly Since it hath been known that I was Author of that Pill for which Mr. Mathews was famous for many years it is now the judgement of many that I am either Author of or have a hand in whatever Chymical medicine is cryed up and hath a name in City and Country and consequently whatever infamy they shall deserve for future either upon the score of their insufficiency for what they are commended or villany in operation will in the opinion of many blemish my reputation unless I publickly disown and protest against them 4. The Art it self will be in hazard of contempt and being rejected if not of hatred and being abhorred when people shall observe partly the ridiculous effect of some trivial toyes and partly the desperate operation of some other churlish venoms which yet both the one and the other are highly extolled for true universal secrets in medicine and rare efficacious mysteries in nature by pitiful ignorant Sciolists who are masters of nothing but ignorant confidence 5. It would confirm the old scandal that hath been from the beginning thrown upon Chymical medicines to wit that they are full of Danger and quickly either Kill or Cure Now it behoves him that would be a Champion for Pyrotechny to meet with these reproaches betime and nip them in the Bud. Frustra Medicina paratur Cum malaper longas invaluëre moras 6. Unless this remedy of disclaiming such Chymical fooleries be seasonably that is speedily applyed the abused people finding their expectation once again deluded by such quacking Empericks will in a short time come to suspect all Chymical preparations for such as they or others with little or no profit perhaps to their Cost and Extream hazard have Experienced They will at last startle at the very name of a Chymical medicine as at the appearance of some ghastly Ghost or spectrum Away will one cry with your Chymistry for such a time I took an universal Pill or Powder and escaped very narrowly of being sent by it on a fools errand out of the world besides such a person took it who in few dayes or perhaps not many hours was so perfectly cured thereby of all diseases as to lie covered with a Tombe-stone Such true reports of the pernicious effects of some Catholick venom will stick as an indelible blot of infamy to blemish true and real Chymical medicines unless the disguise be pluckt off from such counterfeit preparations under which they march with the greatest confidence imaginable promising wonders though upon no ground and without the least truth to the disgrace of Pyrotechny and its true Adept sons except the Cheat of them be discovered and laid open to the world 7. And lastly I have been almost wearied with sollicitations both by word of mouth and letters from several persons here in Town and living in divers parts of the Countrey to know what my judgement is concerning such and such highly extolled medicines Whom not to undeceive and disabuse lying in my power to do it would in effect be the same as to abuse them Qui non prohibet malum quod potest jubet And so I come at length to answer the importunities of such who have requested my opinion and Censure of the forementioned perparations and shall begin with that known by the name of Lockyers Pill or Pillula extracta Radiis solis Concerning which I have seen and read a Tractate Written likewise Tables on a board exposed commending it without either Reaon or measure Who was first Godfather to the Pill I know not but its name at the Beginning was as absolute an Abortive in Grammar as the Pill it self was in Philosophy and Pyrotechny and was called Pilluradii Extractus solus the interpretation of which would puzzle a Synod of Grammarians though since the Pill hath learned so much true Latine as to proclaime its name Pillula radiis solis extracta which was the meaning of the former barbarous denomination as might be collected from its gaping rather then speaking By which licking of its name till it had some tolerable shape as Bears are said to lick their whelps and by other manifest symptomes it appears that the Book in commendation of this new bawble was midwif't into the world by some of the forlorn hope of the Schools of learning in reading which with seriousness I was surprized with a double admiration First That any man of common discretion should run into such Extravagant sesquipedantick Rodomontadoes in praise of a preparation which is absit invidia dictis one of the poorest meanest and most vulgar that is or can be made of Antimony by the fire Secondly That such a pitiful toy and more pitiful Scribble in praise of it should among any that pretend to reason find other acceptance then derision his brags concerning it appearing at first view so palpably gross as to try the faith of a Solifidian for confirmation of which wonderful effects to have nothing but the ipse dixit of one who in his too lavish boastings would out-do a profest Mountebanck and yet to find so much credit as to become famous speaks the levity and madness of the people advanced to such a degree and height as to incur the censure of Orestes himself when most distracted Those expressions which I findused in its commendation viz. that it is the best thing which ever he met with or desires may in some sense be true and we have an English proverb fit to the purpose Give a fool or a child a bawble and he will not leave it for a noble Gold it self may be and oft is overvalued by a wise man no marvel then if a butterfly or a play-toy be overprized by a Schoolboy And a pretty play-toy I must confess this is if that were all nor should I ever censure it if it did not play with the skins and lives of mankind I shall not say of this Pill that it is preparatio insulsa having in it a double Salt to wit common and Salt-petre but this I shall confidently affirm of it and the Charcoal in it will confirm my sentence that it is Nigro carbone notanda He that shall commend this or any other preparation like unto this so highly as I find that to be if his breast assents to the truth of what he writes with his pen deserves to be sent from the School of Vulcan to pick Sallets with Nebuchadnezzar till the dew of Heaven have cooled his overheated noddle so as to understand himself and his operations a little better then he doth The preparation is at best but a Crocus of Antimony and so much more churlish then the common made as the Apothecaries prepare it by flushing with

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