Aurum potabile he discommends and inveighs against it, by reason of the corrosive waters which are used in it: Which argument our Dʳ. Guin urgeth against D. Antonius. Erastus concludes their Philosophicall stones and potable gold, &c. to be no better then poyson, a meer imposture, a non Ens; dig’d out of that broody hill belike this goodly golden stone is, ubi nascetur ridiculus mus.

Paracelsus and his Chymisticall followers, as so many Promethei, will fetch fire from heaven, will cure all manner of diseases with Minerals, accounting them the only Physick on the other side. Paracelsus calls Galen, Hippocrates, and all their adherents, infants, idiots, Sophisters, &c. Apage sis istos qui Vulcanias istas Metamorphoses sugillant, inscitiæ soboles, supinæ pertinaciæ alumnos, &c. not worthy the name of Physicians, for want of these remedies;

and brags that by them he can make a man live 160 yeers, or to the worlds end, with their Alexipharmacums, Panaceas, Mummia’s, unguentum Armarium, and such Magneticall cures, Lampas vitæ & mortis, Balneum Dianæ, Balsamum, Electrum Magico-physicum, Amuleta Martialia, &c. What will not he and his followers effect?

He brags moreover that he was primus medicorum, and did more famous cures then all the Physicians in Europe besides, a drop of his preparations should go farther then a dram, or ounce of theirs, those loathsome and fulsome filthy potions, Heterocliticall pills (so he cals them) horse medicines, ad quorum aspectum Cyclops Polyphemus exhorresceret.

And though some condemn their skill, and Magneticall cures as tending to Magicall superstition, witchery, charms, &c. yet they admire, stiffly vindicate nevertheless, and infinitely prefer them. But these are both in extreams, the middle sort approve of Minerals, though not in so high a degree.

Lemnius lib. 3. cap. 6. de occult. nat. mir. commends Gold inwardly, and outwardly used, as in Rings, excellent good in medicines; and such mixtures as are made for melancholy men, saith Wecker. antid. spec. lib. 1. to whom Renodeus subscribes, lib. 2. cap. 2. Ficinus lib. 2. cap. 19. Fernel. meth. med. lib. 5. cap. 21. de Cardiacis, Daniel Sennertus lib. 1. part. 2. cap. 9. Audernacus, Libavius, Quercetanus, Oswaldus Crollius, Euonymus, Rubeus, and Matthiolus in the fourth book of his Epistles, Andreas à Blawen epist. ad Matthiolum, as commended and formerly used by Avicenna, Arnoldus, and many others:

Matthiolus in the same place approves of potable gold, Mercury, with many such Chymicall Confections, and goes so far in approbation of them, that he holds no man can be an excellent Physician that hath not some skill in Chymisticall distillations, and that Chronick diseases can hardly be cured without mineral medicines: Look for Antimony among purgers.