1892.] NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 153 



who found some yellow liquor in a golden flask when ploughing 

 one day in Sicily. Supposing it to be dew he drank it off, and was 

 immediately transformed into a hale, robust, and highly-accom- 

 plished youth. Having abandoned his day-laboring, he was ad- 

 mitted to the service of the King of Sicily and served the court 

 eighty years.. 



The belief in a life-prolonging elixir, sometimes claimed of the 

 tincture of gold and sometimes of secret preparations, prevailed for 

 centuries. Even so great a philosopher as Descartes believed he 

 had attained the art of living a few hundred years ; this belief was 

 shared by some of his friends, and when he died before reaching 

 sixty years they were convinced that he had been poisoned. 



Raymond Lully, a contemporary of Friar Bacon, also experienced 

 the restorative effect of this fountain of youth, if we can trust the 

 statement in the curious verses of Sir George Ripley, composed in 

 1471. 



" An Oyle is drawne owte in colour of Gold, 

 Or lyke thereto out of our fire Red Lead, 

 Whych Raymond sayd when he was old 

 Much more than Gold wold stand hym instede ; 

 For when he was for age nygh dede. 

 He made thereof Aurum Potabile 

 Whych hym revyvyd as men myght see". 



(Compound of Alchymie.; 



Oswald Croll, a German physician of the 16th century, wrote in 

 1609 in praise of gold as a medicine. I quote the English transla- 

 tion of his Basilica chymica published at London in 1670. 



" It is the principal part of a Physician that would Cure the 

 Sick, first to comfort the Heart, and afterwards assault the Disease. 

 Those to whom the harmonious Analogy of Superiours and In- 

 feriours hath been known, and who from suffrages of Astrologers 

 have learned that to the two greatest Lights of Heaven, the two 

 principal parts of Man, viz., the Heart and Brain, in things of 



Nature latently rests in Gold For' Nature hath endowed 



Gold with no contemptible virtues, which who so knows how to 

 draw out, and by ingenious Artifice is able rightly to use, he will 

 find Gold, which seemed dead and barren, so lively and pregnant 



that it germinates and of itself progenerates new Gold 



Whence the true Philosophers have exquisitely prepared a wonderful 

 and greatly to be desired Medicine with which the impurities of im- 

 perfect Metals are removed and all vices of affects in uncurable 

 Diseases of Humane Bodies, perfectly exterminated." .... 



Croll then says he has tried almost one hundred different prepa- 

 rations of aurum potabile, and condemns most of them to recommend 

 bis own, which is fulminating gold, called by him "Calx of Sol." 

 His process embraces nauseous ingredients, and the product is free 

 from gold. 



Paracelsus, the physician who did so much to improve materia 

 Vol. XL— 11 



