Mercury’s book and the conjectural womb

Meaning

The supplied German in Philosophical Summary · unit 2 reads Buch deß Mercurii, “book of Mercury.” Note n199 observes that the ensuing maternal description makes Bauch, belly or womb, a possible intended reading. The difference is consequential: a conjecture motivated by context is not the same thing as the word actually retained in the edition.

The lexicon preserves Book of Mercury as the historical reading and marks the womb alternative as conjectural. Summary §3 supplies adjacent maternal context, not a replacement spelling for §2. Babylon and its surrounding extent remain unresolved imagery; neither textual difficulty warrants a guessed chemical identification.