
Originally Posted by
JDP
And in answer to Elixirmixer's question: no, there is nothing remotely "alchemical" (properly) about these chapters either. As he seems to be aware of (at least in the other thread), French was just a "chymist" who had an interest in such subjects as the Stone and transmutation in general, but he himself did not know how to make the Stone. He collected "recipes" from many sources, and he himself admits that he has not been able to test all of them, plus none of the ones he printed in his book are about making the Stone. And only a relative few of the processes he printed have something to do with transmutation either. For example, in the last process in the "Calcination" chapter (page 250) there is a claim that the product of such operations (a "fixed" mercury) will "augment gold" (in other words, it will increase either the weight or the "tincture" of gold. This type of processes were among the methods of the "puffers" and "multipliers" that the alchemists kept on attacking and defaming as "fools", "knaves" and/or "sophists".)
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