DiotimosReading Desk

Diotimos Library · Esotericism & Spirituality Collection · English Edition

Gerhard Dorn and John French

A Chymical Dictionary

An Expanded Diotimos Lexicon of Paracelsian and Alchemical Language

Explore the Lexicon
A Chymical DictionaryCalcedonium tartarum

Swipe or use the arrow keys.

English Edition · Branch 464 of 740

Calcedonium tartarum

A Chymical Dictionary

p. 464

Calcedonium tartarum

Body disease and historical medicine · A Chymical Dictionary

At a Glance

The word. A bodily tartar explained through failed expulsion.

A place to read. The historical definition below, 1650 dictionary, unnumbered definition page 13; facsimile PDF page 341.

Historical Definition

Calcedonium tartarum is harmful matter in the human body, arising because the expulsive faculty fails to expel what has been separated.

Meaning

The entry supplies a causal account within the historical physiology: separation has occurred, but expulsion fails, leaving harmful matter. The distinction between those two acts is the point. It is not enough that material be separated from nourishment or another bodily process; in this account it must also be removed.

The term is a bodily use of tartar vocabulary. It should not automatically be read as the same material found in a wine vessel. Tartarum provides the broader family, while Anodus and Excrementa offer comparisons for separated or rejected matter. The historical explanation gives no unique modern pathological identification, and the edition does not supply one by conjecture.

Places to Read

Tartarum. A wine-vessel deposit whose name also serves for bodily stones or gravel.

Anodus. A bodily product defined through renal separation.

Excrementa. Superfluities described through expulsion by Nature.

Historical source: 1650 dictionary, unnumbered definition page 13; facsimile PDF page 341 — Facsimile

Sources. A Chymicall Dictionary (1650), s.v. Calcedonium tartarum ; compare Tartarum, Anodus, Excrementa

See also. Tartarum; Anodus; Excrementa

464

About This Reading Edition

The complete 706 historical definitions of the 1650 English dictionary, modernised and accompanied by expanded Diotimos commentary, reading routes, 15 textual notes and complete linked indexes.

Historical Text

A Chymicall Dictionary, London 1650, English version associated with John French, based on Gerhard Dorn’s Dictionarium Theophrasti Paracelsi. The containing volume also prints Sendivogius and Paracelsus; neither neighboring work changes this dictionary’s attribution.

About This Edition

Complete 706 definition paragraphs with new introduction, commentary, reading guides and indexes; Diotimos Editions, 2026.

Rights

The historical 1650 English text is in the public domain. New introduction, commentary, reading guides and indexes are © 2026 Diotimos Editions and published with the site owner’s authorization.