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Operations of union and perfection

Dulcification

Dulcification, “sweetening”; dulcificiren, “dulcify”; Edulcoration, “edulcoration or sweetening”

The intended transformation of a sharp or corrosive subject into a sweet, compatible preparation.

From the book

The Golden Chain of Homer

Anonymous (traditionally attributed to Anton Joseph Kirchweger) · Diotimos Editions · 2026

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Orientation

At a Glance

  • The wordThe intended transformation of a sharp or corrosive subject into a sweet, compatible preparation.
  • In the Golden ChainSweetening tests the book’s rule that opposed extremes require a suitable middle.
  • Translation“Dulcify,” “sweeten,” and “edulcorate” retain a family of technical and sensory expressions.
  • A place to readB2C09S015–B2C09S016, where the author explains what he demands of the word “sweet.”

Meaning

Dulcification is sweetening understood as a change in a preparation’s operative nature and its relation to a recipient. The author insists that merely calling a substance sweet does not make it so. His intended sweetness is not only a reduction of detectable sharpness but a condition he compares positively with sugar and honey. At the same time, this sensory language participates in a larger claim that mineral matter can become homogeneous with vegetable and animal nature.

The term must be read as a historical chymical claim. A preparation’s supposed sweetness, mineral ancestry, and asserted medicinal compatibility are linked within the author’s system; the book does not supply a modern demonstration that such a product is safe. The lexicon can explain the intended distinction between correction and mere dilution without endorsing its therapeutic conclusion.

Use in the book

B1C22S024–B1C22S025 criticizes customary sweetening with highly rectified wine spirit. The author says that lengthy treatment has still left practitioners administering their preparations with anxiety. His explanation is structural: the very volatile spirit and comparatively fixed corrosive are extremes, and their proper middle has been omitted. B1C22S031 gives vinegar a mediating position because it has a relation both to wine spirit and to mineral acidity. The proposed improvement follows the same graded anatomy that governs conjunction elsewhere.

B2C09S015 sharply distinguishes genuine sweetness from simply failing to feel a corrosive on the tongue. B2C09S016 then interprets sweetening as transmutation or specification into another natural relation. In B2C10S005 the vegetable is called the coupler that links mineral and animal. These passages show why dulcification is more than an isolated operation upon a bitter taste: it reorganizes the relations among the three kingdoms that the author has already established cosmologically.

B2C10S004 expressly rejects the objection that a sufficiently great dilution alone explains the result. B2C10S006–B2C10S007 attributes the change to active portions retained by the mineral while weakened phlegmatic liquid passes away. The author also makes the intended recipient decisive. A subject intended for a mineral purpose need not be sweetened as if it were for animal use. Dulcification therefore belongs to a specified aim, and the later claim of harmless consumption remains the author’s assertion rather than a property established by the operation’s name.

Places to read

  1. Book I · Ch. 22 · §25A missing intermediary explains the criticism of customary correction.
  2. Book I · Ch. 22 · §31Vinegar mediates between spirit and corrosive.
  3. Book II · Ch. 9 · §15The author insists upon positive sweetness.
  4. Book II · Ch. 10 · §4Dilution is distinguished from the claimed transformation.
  5. Book II · Ch. 10 · §7The intended kingdom determines the need for sweetening.

Translation in this edition

Dulcification, dulcificiren, Edulcoration, and edulcoriren are attested forms. Their English equivalents should preserve the relation between technical alteration and ordinary sweetness. The source’s appeal to Latin dulce in B2C09S015 is an explicit argument about the fit between name and thing; it is not permission to infer successful correction from terminology alone.

“Sweet” does not identify a single modern substance, reaction, or toxicity threshold. Its force changes with the author’s comparisons and his claims about affinity. In particular, the broad proposition that a dulcified mineral can be consumed without harm belongs to the historical medical theory being expounded.