How sulphur fumes affect metals.

Antimony.

Antimony shows its hostility by stripping, taking away and plundering all metals with which it melts in fire and mixes. Moreover, like sulphur, its fumes steal the metals’ native natural colour and substitute another.

Quicksilver.

Quicksilver exercises its hostile power against metals by attacking and dissolving those with which it joins, making an amalgam from them. Its fumes—what we call common mercury—also make all metals unmalleable and brittle and calcine them, and whiten every red or gold-coloured metal. It is the greatest enemy of iron and steel: if common Mercury touches an iron rod, or the rod is anointed with mercurial oil, it will afterward break and snap like glass. This is a great secret to be kept well hidden. A magnet must likewise be guarded and protected from Mercury, for it exercises the same hostility against it as against Iron. Any magnet touched by common Mercury, anointed with mercurial oil or merely placed in Mercury afterward attracts no iron forever. Let no one be surprised: these things have natural causes. Mercury draws out the spirit of iron which the magnet secretly contains. Thus it is the spirit of iron in the magnet which attracts the body of Iron. This occurs not only in the magnet but in every other natural thing: a foreign spirit in a body alien to it always attracts the body of its own nature. This must be understood not only of the magnet, but of all natural things, such as ores, stones, plants, roots, humans and animals.

How a magnet is destroyed.

What the antipathy of metals is.

It must also be understood that metals exercise hostilities among themselves and hate one another by their innate nature. You see this in Saturn, which is the Sun’s greatest enemy by its inborn nature: it breaks up all Gold’s members, makes it disfigured and weak, and ruins and corrupts it utterly, even to death, more than any other metal. Tin too hates and is the enemy of all metals: if mixed with them in fire and fusion, it makes them degenerate, unmalleable, hard and unserviceable.

The preservation of Gold: boys’ urine.

Having heard about the enemies of metals, learn now their preservatives, which guard them from every injury and corruption, maintain their nature and virtue and raise their colour to a higher degree. First, Gold cannot be preserved better or more beautifully than in boys’ urine in which sal ammoniac has been dissolved, or in water of sal ammoniac alone. In these it eventually acquires so high a degree of colour that it can rise no further. Silver cannot be protected and preserved better than by boiling in common water or vinegar in which tartar and salt are dissolved. Any old, blackened or stained silver is thus renewed by boiling in them. The best and most useful preservatives of iron and steel are fresh unsalted fat from a castrated pig: it guards all iron and steel from rust if they are anointed with it once a month. Likewise, if iron is melted with fixed arsenic and brought into fusion several times, it can be renewed and fixed so that it never rusts, like silver. Copper can be preserved and protected if merely mixed with sublimed Mercury or anointed with oil of salt, so that it never produces vitriol or verdigris or becomes green.

Iron.

Copper.