Nine Books on the Nature of Things

Short Glossary

Alchemy

The art of preparing and transforming natural things. The work applies it to living materials and ordinary crafted products as well as to metals.

Aquafortis

Strong water, a historical name for corrosive preparations. The name alone does not specify one modern formulation; the local process determines what the text describes.

Arcanum

A hidden or concentrated power, secret, or preparation. The plural arcana can name valued preparations or knowledge, rather than merely information that has not been shared.

Archaeus

An internal formative or operative agent. In Book IX it is distinguished from human makers of signs and from the stars; it should not be silently replaced by a modern organ.

Astrum

A star or stellar agency. The work can speak of an inward relation to stars as well as the heavens; English context determines the particular sense.

Balsam

A preserving power or preparation associated with resistance to corruption. It is not necessarily the particular aromatic material a modern reader may first imagine.

Calcination

A preparation by heating a material into a changed, often powdery condition. Its function depends on the body and sequence described.

Cementation

A treatment in which a body is exposed to the action of surrounding material, often under heat. The historical term should be read through the specified operation.

Coagulation

The bringing of something into a thicker, congealed or more settled condition. The contrast with dissolution does not establish a single modern chemical reaction.

Corruption

The ending or breakdown of an earlier condition. It can make a thing useless, but can also be valued as part of a preparation that yields another condition.

Digestion

A sustained action of warmth or preparation likened to the working of a stomach. The vessel, duration and material give a particular passage its sense.

Distillation

An operation involving the raising and collecting of material through heat and condensation. The work also uses natural processes such as rising moisture as analogies.

Element

One of the four elements of the inherited natural philosophy. An elemental description is not a claim that a material consists of modern chemical elements in the same sense.

Essence

What a thing is, or its operative substance and character in a given discussion. Changes of essence are described alongside changes of form, colour, power and use.

Fixation

The rendering of something stable or resistant to being driven off under the conditions described. A fixed tincture is contrasted with a preparation that fails in fire.

Generation

The arising of a natural thing. Book I distinguishes generation through nature from generation through art and makes putrefaction central to its account.

Homunculus

The small artificial human claimed in Book I. The passage belongs to historical speculation about generation through art, and is not a demonstrated method of producing a person.

Imagination

A power to which the work assigns effects in bodily formation. Its historical claims, especially about pregnancy and appearance, should not be treated as present-day biological explanations.

Imbibition

The moistening or soaking of a material. Rain upon the earth provides one analogy for interpreting repeated moistening in an artificial operation.

Matrix

A receptacle or generative place in which a thing can be formed. The term’s scope is broader than the anatomical uterus when used of other natural bodies.

Mercury

A named material and one of the three principles. In the local correspondence of Book I it is related to spirit; the work’s operative details still matter.

Mortification

The ending of a material’s earlier life, activity or condition through preparation. It needs to be distinguished from an unqualified modern claim about killing a living organism.

Mummia

A historical term associated here with the preservation and powers of bodily material. Its meaning is not exhausted by the modern word mummy or by a single kind of embalmed object.

Putrefaction

A change through moist warmth in which an earlier condition is broken down. The work treats it both as decay and as a possible beginning of generation.

Quintessence

A specially prepared or purified condition associated with concentrated powers and resistance to corruption. The local account is more informative than simply translating it as fifth element.

Reverberation

A mode of heating used in preparation. The word names an operation or its arrangement, and should not be reduced to the ordinary modern meaning of an echo.

Resuscitation

The restoration or renewed activity of a natural thing after an earlier condition has ended. The book’s examples determine the scope of this revival.

Salt

One of the three principles and also the name of particular materials. Its relation to body in Book I does not make all historical salts identical to common table salt.

Separation

The distinguishing or removing of constituents from a mixture or body. Book VIII develops it across the elements, minerals and other natural materials.

Signature

An outward mark read as a sign of something inward or otherwise concealed. Book IX distinguishes signs made by people, by the Archaeus and by stars.

Sublimation

A preparation in which material is raised and collected above its earlier position. Its historical uses require attention to what is raised, what remains and what is collected.