Metallic Medicines

Use in the book

The detailed catalogue on pages 67–6923 describes powders, extracts, liquors, spiritual waters and running corporeal mercuries produced from silver and gold. Page 70 then asks what all such preparations are and answers that, after appropriate treatment, they are costly and excellent medicines for internal and external diseases. The concession is immediately followed by the denial that they are consequently first matter, even the specified first matter of the metals.

The same structure recurs with embryonic metallic materials. Pages 80–812 grant them powers in preparing metals for medicines and other purposes, yet deny that they supply the universal ground required for the Stone. Their practical interest does not repair the conceptual difficulty: they have already moved beyond the pri-material state.

The salt discussion repeats the concession on page 125. Silver and gold salts obtained by laborants are allowed to remain high medicines useful to human health, but the following argument distinguishes that claim from the force of a regenerated tinctorial salt. A product’s being called medicinal therefore does not prove that it can transmute, and its failure as a transmuting agent does not, for Khunrath, settle its medicinal worth.

This distinction prevents a crude reading of the book as a dismissal of all ordinary laboratory practice. Khunrath knows and acknowledges multiple preparations even while attacking the claim that they independently yield the universal subject. It also prevents the reverse mistake, in which his praise of medicines is taken as experimental validation of the broader Stone doctrine. The treatise supplies no clinical evidence, dosing framework or present-day safety basis for using these products.

Places to read

1. 1599 p. 67The catalogue begins with metallic preparation by corrosive waters and further operations.
2. 1599 p. 69The range of resulting forms includes liquors, powders and corporeal running mercuries.
3. 1599 p. 70Medicinal excellence is conceded while first-matter status is denied.
4. 1599 p. 80Useful medicinal powers are conceded to embryonic materials; the statement continues on page 81.
5. 1599 p. 125Prepared metallic salts receive a similar medicinal concession.
6. 1599 p. 126The subsequent argument distinguishes stains and ordinary preparations from transmuting salts.

Translation in this edition

“Medicine” retains the breadth of Medicina and Artzney in the author’s vocabulary. The lexicon consistently attributes therapeutic praise to Khunrath rather than turning it into advice. Historical descriptions of internal use, purification or sweetening must not be read as establishing that a substance is harmless to ingest.