" He also tells us that he was "wont to
call himself a _gold-melter_ and a _chemist_."
[72] The principal Authors on alchymy are Geber, the Arab, Friar Bacon,
Sully, John and Isaac Hallendus, Basil Valentine, Paracelsus, Van
Zuchter, and Sendirogius.
[73] Corringius calls this statement in question, and asks how Suidas,
who lived but five hundred yours between them, should know what happened
eight hundred years before him? To which Borrichius the Dane, answers,
that he had learnt it of Eudemus, Helladius, Zozimus, Pamphilius, and
others, as Suidas himself relates.
[74] It does not appear that the Egyptians transmuted gold; they had
ways of separating it from all kinds of bodies, from the very mud of the
Nile, and stones of all kinds: but, adds Kercher, these secrets were
never written down, or made public, but confined to the royal family,
and handed down traditionally from father to son.
CHAPTER IX.
ALCHYMICAL AND ASTROLOGICAL CHIMERA.
Having so far explained the fragile basis on which human knowledge may
be said to have depended, during the obscurity and barbarity of the
middle ages, when the progress of true knowledge was obstructed by the
most absurd fancies, and puerile conceits: when conjectures, caprices,
and dreams supplied the place of the most useful sciences, and of the
most important truths, the subsequent illustrative reflections may serve
as a guide to direct the attention of the reader to other delusions,
which arose out of the general chaos.
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