Alchemy Astrology & Occult

Informative and anecdotal
introduction into alchemy
16. [SCHRÖER, Samuel?]. Curieuse Untersuchung etlicher
Mineralien, Thiere und Kräuter, insonderheit derer sich die
Sophisten in praeparirung des Lapidis bedienen, ...
[Jena?], 1703. 8vo. With a double-page engraved frontispiece,
showing the portraits of Basilius Valentinus and Paracelsus.
Modern brown sheepskin. € 750
Second and revised edition of an anonymously published treatise on
the alchemical ingredients for the Philosopher’s Stone. According
to 18th-century sources, it was probably written by Samuel Schröer
(1679–1716), an obscure physician and alchemist from Leipzig. This
revised second and last edition contains a frontispiece that is identical
to that of the first edition of 1702. Besides giving an introduction
in the alchemical elements, the book is also rich on stories of “true”
transformations, including the story of a stranger in an inn near
Salzburg. After staying there for a few days, teaching the innkeeper’s
wife to make several curiosities of candy and dried confit in the
Italian manner, the stranger wasn’t able to afford his lodgings. He
then threw a rag into a fire, sprinkled it with some red powder and it
subsequently turned into gold.
The engraved frontispiece mounted, the outer margins of E4-E6
strengthened, browned throughout and some spots; a good copy.
Brüning 3086; Ferguson I, p. 193; Otto, Oberlausizischen Schriftsteller III, p. 207.