The Original Editor to the Reader

I here present the kindly reader with a little work of natural philosophy and chemistry in two parts, of very great value, the like of which he will probably scarcely have seen. According to a trustworthy report, a thousand thalers was once paid for its manuscript. Indeed, quite recently, and throughout this period, some have paid thirty, forty, fifty, or even sixty thalers to have it communicated to them. An enthusiast for chemistry living elsewhere, to whom I had sent a copy as a special act of friendship, wrote to me about it on 27 June of this year, 1722, as follows:

“Nine years ago I put into practice the method of sweetening and of making fixed alkalis volatile, and through a third party effected extraordinary and remarkable cures in cancer, mortification, stone, and pleurisy. Twelve years ago I would gladly have paid a thousand florins for such a manuscript. It is now a pleasure to see that others have travelled the same road and have found the same thing through practice.”

Several people who possess this writing will certainly be very displeased to see it now appear in print and become public. Yet the intention of its author, whose identity remains unknown to this day, was undoubtedly that publication should benefit many people, as can clearly be seen here and there in the work, particularly on page 315. Moreover, so many copies have been made during these years that there is strong reason to suppose that someone or other will publish it in any event. I therefore hope that its possessors will not take my undertaking too badly, while others will be grateful that a thing of such great value is being communicated to them at little cost, with good intentions and in the most faithful and complete form.

For, having received three different copies from different places, I carefully compared them with the help of a good friend. Since one contained a good deal more than another, what is missing from most people’s copies has been supplied here. Nevertheless, I have chosen neither to alter anything on my own authority nor to correct what may previously have been miscopied or misread. I have deliberately left everything as I found it, merely adding a parenthetical indication here and there when there was a variant reading.

If the author’s Latin has not come out well in places, and so forth, he can readily be forgiven, especially if one considers how he describes himself on page 152. And what do polished words and style matter to the reader? It is enough that the exposition is otherwise clear and that more solid knowledge can be drawn from it than I could praise at length in this narrow space. In giving the book its title, we wished to avoid all charlatanry and preferred to print it just as plainly as the author himself had drafted it.

We could have appended a third part, On the Transmutation of Metals, which its possessors wish to attribute to our writer and value very highly; the author himself also says something about such matters on page 236. For the present, however, we have had reservations about doing so. What may happen in this respect in the future we shall leave to time. Meanwhile, let the kindly reader use these two parts to the glory of God, to whom all knowledge, including knowledge of nature, should lead us. Farewell!