Orpiment, arsenic, and marcasite

Meaning

These names occur chiefly in criticism, not as an endorsed ingredient-list. Nature’s opening rebuke includes boiling orpiment among a bungler’s activities. Via contrasts natural work in the earth with the many named materials of contemporary practitioners, then treats such philosophical material-names as inventions of ignorant sophists. Later it warns about harmful fumes and the stench of marcasites and salts. The English expands abbreviated forms in Via into ordinary names, while the historical abbreviations remain useful lookup evidence. The sources’ accusatory voices should stay visible: the lexicon reports their polemic and danger claims without identifying every historical mineral term with a single modern composition or recommending use.