make, at least in any considerable quantity) fixt into perfect Gold.
And being by me demanded whether or no any other Mercury would not as
well have been changed by the same Operations, he assured me of the
Negative.
[Footnote 21: _Dixi autem de argento vivo a metallis prolicito, quod
vulgare ob nimiam frigiditatem & humiditatem nimium concoctioni est
contumax, nec ab auro solum alterato coerceri potest._ Gast. Clave. in
Apoll.]
And since I am fallen upon the mention of the Mercuries of metals, you
will perhaps expect (_Eleutherius_!) that I should say something of
their two other principles; but must freely confess to you, that what
Disparity there may be between the salts and sulphurs of Metals and
other Menerals [Transcriber's Note: Minerals], I am not my self
experienced enough in the separations and examens of them, to venture
to determine: (for as for the salts of Metals, I formerly represented
it as a thing much to be question'd, whether they have any at all:)
And for the processes of separation I find in Authors, if they were
(what many of them are not) successfully practicable, as I noted
above, yet they are to be performed by the assistance of other bodies,
so hardly, if upon any termes at all, separable from them, that it is
very difficult to give the separated principles all their due, and no
more. But the Sulphur of Antimony which is vehemently vomitive, and
the strongly scented Anodyne Sulphur of Vitriol inclines me to think
that not only Mineral Sulphurs differ from Vegetable ones, but also
from one another, retaining much of the nature of their Concretes. The
salts of metals, and of some sort of minerals, You will easily guesse
by [Errata: (by] the Doubts I formerly express'd, whether metals have
any salt at all [Errata: all)], that I have not been so happy as yet
to see, perhaps not for want of curiosity. But if _Paracelsus_ did
alwaies write so consentaneously to himself that his opinion were
_confidently_ to be collected from every place of his writings where
he seems to expresse it, I might safely take upon me to tell you, that
he both countenances in general what I have delivered in my Fourth
main consideration, and in particular warrants me to suspect that
there may be a difference in metalline and mineral Salts, as well as
we find it in those of other bodies. For, _Sulphur_ (sayes he)[22]
_aliud in auro, aliud in argento, aliud in ferro, aliud in plumbo,
stanno, &c. sic aliud in Saphiro, aliud in Smaragdo, aliud in rubino,
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