Medicinisch-Chymisch- und Alchemistisches Oraculum, darinnen man nicht nur alle Zeichen und Abkürzungen welche so wohl in den Recepten und Büchern der Aerzte und Apothecker als auch in den Schrifften der Chemisten und Alchemisten vorkommen findet, sondern deme auch ein sehr rares Chymisches Manuscript eines gewissen Reichs beygefüget. (Followed by) Geheimniß aller Geheimnisse oder Clavis Sapientiae omnium philosophorum et adeptorum, in einem guldenen Kleinod und Compendio veritatis philosophico, aus einem uralten Manuscript von Anno 1300 mitgetheilet und ans Licht gestellet.
Medical, Chemical and Alchemical Oracle, in which are found all the signs and abbreviations used in the recipes and books of physicians and apothecaries as well as in the writings of chemists and alchemists, to which is added a very rare chemical manuscript of a certain Reichs The Secret of All Secrets, or Key to the Wisdom of All Philosophers and Adepts, taken from a very ancient manuscript of the year 1300.
Ulm and Memmingen, Gaumische Handlung, 1755. Colophon: Ulm, Christian Ulrich Wagner, printer to the chancery.
8vo, 205 x 130 mm. (3) ff., 72 pp. Contemporary plain temporary boards. 2 full-page woodcuts, headpieces, initials, tailpieces and printer's device (printing press, motto Cum ubertate vigo). Early manuscript ownership inscription on the title.
FIRST EDITION of this little book with a false bottom, which is at once the most complete dictionary of symbols ever printed in late alchemy and a fully fledged hermetic treatise, addressed "to the Sons of natural hermetic Wisdom".
The first part (pp. 1-34) is a pure typographical curiosity: 1,829 signs, cut in wood or specially cast, arranged in two-column tables, Latin and German, under 359 entries, from Abstrahere to Zincum. There are as many as thirty graphic variants for alum alone, some thirty for distilled vinegar, the seven metals under their planets, the operations of the Great Work, the vessels, the times and the weights. The preface, dated 16 January 1755, explains that its author sought to gather together what lay "scattered and dispersed" in the books of the alchemists so that everyone might at last be able to read them.
The second part changes register. The Clavis Sapientiae, presented as taken from a manuscript of 1300, opens with a title on whose verso a double-headed eagle entwined with a caduceus, set within a lozenge, warns the reader: "Wer mich liest, der mercke drauf" - let whoever reads me take heed.
The second woodcut, beneath the motto Ora et labora, shows an old alchemist kneeling before his athanor, holding the philosophers' stone in one hand and a lamp in the other, while a hand emerging from the clouds holds out a banderole to him: Initium sapientiae timor Dei.
The iconography derives directly from Khunrath's Amphitheatrum, and the text openly refers to it, mentioning "our secret Oratory and Laboratory". There follow the epistle to the hermetic brothers and friends, a preface reproducing that of Salomon Trismosin's Aureum Vellus (with the catalogue of his treatises), and then the treatise itself, in which the recipes for the quintessence, the salt of metals and the red tincture are written in the very symbols that the first part has just taught.
The book thus reads like a course: first the alphabet, then the text.
A work of reference for two and a half centuries. Wolfgang Schneider, holder of the chair of the history of pharmacy at the Technical University of Braunschweig, made it the basis of his Lexikon alchemistisch-pharmazeutischer Symbole in 1962, and Adam McLean reproduced it in full in his Hermetic Studies. A second edition appeared in Ulm in 1772; the first, in its original boards is rare.
Ferguson II, 84. Duveen 440. Neu 2733. Wellcome IV, 102.
https://opendata.uni-halle.de/handle/497920112/1149660
https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wolfgang_Schneider_(Pharmaziehistoriker)
Condition: Boards soiled and rubbed, spine worn; light dampstain to the first leaves. Uncut copy, as issued.
