The epitome of chemical secrets By Pierre Iean Fabre 1636

The epitome of chemical secrets By Pierre Iean Fabre 1636

It is impossible, in my opinion, to find among the calculus of the sciences and the arts, both mechanical and liberal, none perfect at its source; they are perfected from day to day, like the embryo in its mother, which in its beginning is formless, and little by little insensibly acquires the polishing and embellishment destined by nature. Suddenly, it is impossible, it takes time to perfect the slightest thing in nature.

Alchemy, which is the mistress of the Arts and Natural Sciences, gives us enough to know: For if we contemplate it in the first centuries when men were hutted in the caves of the rocks and in the hollows of the trees, still born, and all in the abyss of Divine knowledge and intelligence, without yet making itself known to man, as being almost useless to him, not yet knowing that it was pure and impure but as soon as little by little, this spirit of life, implanted in the humid radical of man, came to lose its strength and vigor; that diseases began to be born; as soon as the man, feeling, weakened and diminished in him the vigor of life by his enemies, he began to think and meditate as sensible and intelligent, by what means and in what manner he could resist this inconvenience. 

He was known by the light of the natural and infused sciences, which his Creator had given him, that the world where he was, was all full of life similar to that which was in him, and that he could not remain for a moment without the perpetual attraction of that vital spirit which he continually attracted by means of his lungs, still sufficient to preserve his life, that he still had to draw from his food a spirit of life more fixed and solid than that which he drew from the air, and that the food he took to sustain himself his life, had already attracted to himself a quantity of that vital spirit, infused by all the elements, and had prepared him to appropriate and make their own, and that his stomach, liver, heart, and all parts of it his body worked night and day to separate this vital spirit, which was infused, both among all the elements, and among all the elementary individuals, in order to be able to maintain and preserve its miserable life.

And that with all this he could not yet avoid the misfortune of diseases; he thought, therefore, by a Divine warning, a man of science by means of which he had knowledge: firstly of this vital spirit, the principle and support of his life; secondly, he would have the knowledge of all the individuals who abounded in this vital spirit; the use of which could strengthen his life, and oppose the enemies of it. 

Thirdly, he found the means and method of separating this vital substance on the model of the natural vessels which nature had forged in itself, and in all animals, for the convenience of this separation. 

For a fourth he excused all means of preventing the weakening of that spirit of life implanted in him, so as to prevent him from succumbing to the onslaught of so many maladies, which by time had to attack him.

The whole was very powerful, and collected in this divine spirit, but the communication which it left us was very small; for in the succeeding ages, when the earth began to be populated and adorned with men, we find no vestiges by which we can understand that our first ancestors were great chemists, and knew perfectly the artifice of separating the pure of impurity, and the extraction of that vital spirit, of which the whole world is full, and of which nothing can be empty.