Private Secrets or Special Secrets

Frontispiece of the Collection of the Most Curious and Rare Secrets ,
of Joseph du Chesne,
Sieur de la Violette and Baron de Morence (1544-1609),
physician to King Henry IV of France, where the Secrets Particuliers
appear ,
following the Treatise on Mineral Medicine
and the Treatise on Metallic Medicine.

SPECIAL SECRETS

Joseph du Chesne (Quercenatus)
1641
(posthumous edition)

The author's antipodatric water.

The basis of this great remedy is a water composed of eight pints of river water, in which are extinguished sixteen times four steel balls weighing one pound each, & a copper ball weighing half a pound, after which you must infuse in two pints of this water, half an ounce of glass of antimony for the space of 14 hours, & in the other six pints, you will dissolve two ounces of precipitated Mercury: these two waters thus prepared will be mixed in a matrass, for use it as we will say below.
You will make the precipitated Mercury in the common way, but on four ounces of Mercury & as much strong water, you will add half an ounce of pulverized sulfur, which you will dissolve in the water before putting the Mercury there, after you will evaporate the strong water until dry, & you will have a precipitated Mercury white as snow.
There are others, like Rulandus, who, for a sure remedy against gout, use a decoction made of hibiscus leaves, the inner bark of the elderberry, chamomile flowers, and sweet clover, with a fair amount of iron water or old marshal's water, or some water in which you have extinguished red copper or fire several times: they then add to each pound of this decoction an ounce of copper dissolved in common strong water, and a half scr upule of sublimed Mercury, & render this water more or less acrid, according as they add more or less of the dissolution of the copper & of the sublimed mercury. The Physician must adjust the doses according to the quality of the disease and the disposition of the patient.
Others use aquafortis against the same disease, from which silver has been separated with a decoction of sweet clover, to which they add a little sublimated Mercury.
There are others who make a specific remedy for this kind of evil, by means of the phlegm and the spirit which are drawn from the vitriol, and mainly from the greenness of the sea salt, which they apply a little warmly with cloths, on the painful part.

The others happily use the water into which they have thrown lead, copper, gold & silver several times, after having melted them, finally they infuse & macerate litharge, antimony, minium & marcasites of gold & silver in a bain-marie.
Several still make a remedy which they consider singular against these pains indomitable by the innocuous and paregoric, they compose it of common water, in which they macerate quicklime for ten or twelve days, and then cook in it flowers of white elder buds, they add to this colcotar, or faeces of strong water, and of this composition they use it variously according to the quality of the ailments.
& that it be well & faithfully prepared & not quite raw, as the Apothecaries are accused of preparing it ordinarily in their ointments, plasters & poultices. One can still distill the waters in which one will have calcined & dissolved the Mercurys, & from these waters imprinted with its essence, use it as a remedy of great virtue.
It is therefore not without reason that to all antipodatric waters, metallic and mineral substances are added, especially since they all contain the mercurial substance, which is the true refrigerant, which drives out inflammations and the acrimony of the substances retained in the articles, and this, not as are the oxycrates, the plantain juices and the ordinary narcotics which clog the pores, clog the coarse humors and the hardened gums, and consequently irritate the evil instead of softening it On the contrary, metallic things, by the salts of a mercurial nature which they communicate to the waters in which they are infused, temper the acrimonies of flowing materials, dissipate, attenuate, resolve, & consume the gypsum & gummy, & at the same time remove the joint cause, which does harm & causes pain,& therefore totally & radically cures gout & all pains.

The use of this antipodatric water is to soak in it a cloth in the form of a garter, of which you will pass the part above the diseased place, & it will chase the evil below, & little by little you will lower the band to follow the evil until it is entirely removed.

The true Laudanum or Nepenthes of the Author.

The preparation of this remedy supposes for its base the narcotic of vitriol & the Moon. To make such a narcotic, therefore, you must take four ounces of well reddened vitriol & the weight of ten crowns of calcined Moon, then you have to bring them together & put them in a glass retort over a violent fire of ashes, after having previously poured over half a septier of very good distilled vinegar: iron this vinegar over your material seven or eight times, and it will remain at the bottom, viscous & sticky.You will notice that in such distillations, it is necessary to have a large container, the opening of the neck of which & the beak of the retort enter one into the other, so exactly as far as the apple, that nothing breathes, & moreover it is necessary to fight the joints & refresh the apple of the container with a damp cloth.
Besides, make gold & silver oil, namely that of the Sun with juniper oil, & that of the Moon with sage oil.
On the other hand, make a large quantity of tincture of coral, thus you will have the foundations and the bases which you must have of this great admirable secret.
Make drink the sweet sulfur of vitriol, by various reiterations & mediocre exudations its weight, at least some coral tincture which is vitriolic, & in which you will have previously dissolved some gold leaves. And when an ounce of this sulfur has drunk an ounce and a half of this tincture imprinted with gold, add to it half an ounce of magisterium of pearls, in our way, & as we have described it in our Panacea, of the oil of the Sun & of the Moon, do as we have said above, a drachma & a half. On this mixture which will become blacker & thicker than pitch, add to it the essences of mumie, of theriac & of mirthridat, the confections of alkermes, & of hyacinth, sandalwood of each half drachma, essences of beetle & camphor, of each a scruple,
See again on this subject the works of the Author, where you will find more fully the effects and the admirable virtues of this Nepenthes.

The Author's Elixir or Mercury of Life.
in a moment you will make a snow-white precipitate; besides that you will see in this water the spirit of vitriol suddenly dissolving, separate the water & put it back in again so many times that it no longer has any sourness, & make the separation take place by distillation, so that the water which will come out of it in this way, will leave at the bottom of the vessel an excellent spirit of vitriol for epilepsies. As for the lime which will remain soft at the bottom of the vessel, dry it well, & sublimate it with your vitriolic sulphur, circulate after this matter with a good spirit of wine, to make an excellent remedy, or for the best take three parts of this white lime, regule prepared as above,

The Author's Panacea.
Take one part armoniacal salt, two parts quicklime, mix one and the other together, and put them in a leaded earthen pot, or for the better in a large glass matrass, the apple of which is all luteed, put it on the fire of the wheel, & approach it little by little from the beginning, & at the end cover the vessel with fire & let it cool, after this fire will have lasted four hours, & you will find your armoniacal salt at the bottom of the vessel, separated from the lime, which you will dissolve , filter & coagulate according to the art, then you will grind it & remix it with its double of lime, & put it in a matrass & in a fire, as you did the first time, & at the end of this operation you will find it at the bottom of the vessel, much increased & more fixed than it was before, you will redissolve it again,filter it & coagulate it as before in a vessel of glass or Beauvais clay, repeat this operation three times.
Finally take your fixed armoniacal salt, & melt it in a crucible over a cast iron fire, throw it in an ingot, as metals are thrown into it, grind it, & put it on a glass in the cellar, where it will dissolve in white water like rock water: what you will see happen in a few days: dephlegm this water by a still in a bath or on an ash fire, & take care that instead of dephlegmerizing it only, you do not remove all its humidity, and consequently you do not put it back in its first form of salt.

Take two or three parts of this dephlegmated water, put it in a small alembic body & heat it, then put a part of sublimated Mercury subtly reduced to powder, & on a slow heat you will see it dissolve in a quarter of an hour. This done, take some gray paper folded up into small pieces, and make it drink this water of salt and Mercury, putting each piece watered in this way in a retorte, or in a new still, so long as the paper has drunk up all the water, then distill it over a fire of sand, and your mercurial spirit will come out of the vessel a little reddish because of the paper and the great fire from which you will have expelled it, but if it is so, you will rectify it by the still, and you will make it clear , beautiful, white, sweet & with an odor almost similar to that of musk.Here is your remover for pearls, coral &c. which given alone may serve as a sovereign sudorific remedy.
If therefore you wish to dissolve pearls with this menstruation, take an ounce of the most oriental, wash them well, & pulverize them, then put them in a small body of alembic, of which the neck has only one inch of opening, stop it with a glass cover, & put it on a very slow heat of ashes, where the pearls will dissolve in an hour, & will leave black faeces at the bottom; then separate the clearest of your solution, & pass it through the still, & you will have a solvent which can be used for another time, & for the residences which will remain dry at the bottom, you will pass over it three or four times a good spirit of wine, & then distilled water, by which you will separate all the mercurial spirits of the solvent, which could have remained in the matter,
You will notice that as soon as the solution is done, it must be left to cool, then filtered through a cone of gray paper, which you will put in a funnel, and when by this means the whole has been filtered, you will separate your menses through the still until it is dry, as you have already done above.

This mercurial spirit dissolves not only the pearls, but also the crocus martis, from which an excellent red tincture is obtained, which, separated from its solvent like the pearls, can be used for the health and mainly for that of the liver, which it not only rectifies, but cures the greatest diseases, such as the most obstinate dropsies and dysentery.
Take, moreover, regulus of antimony, imbued with the spirit of the seven metals, and of the sublimated Mercury, equal parts, pound the whole and put it in a retort to distil it, and make it pass in the form of fat or frozen oil, and throw it afterwards into boiling water, where first you will see your oil precipitate into a white powder, which you will wash with cold water seven or eight times, so that it becomes soft and soft. without acridity, which you will then rectify with spirit of wine.
After having prepared this powder, & having dried it well, you will mix it with as much good crystalline saltpeter & flowers of sulfur, & throw the whole in an iron crucible or mortar, then you will set fire to it with a lighted coal, & the saltpeter will ignite & leave your calcined matter at the bottom, take this lime & dissolve it in hot water to draw out the salt, & on the powder which remains put again saltpeter to light it again, repeat this process four or five times to drive out all the arsen ical antimony venom which is what makes your powder emetic.
These well-dried antimony flowers will be dissolved with the same mercurial pearl dissolvent, doing & observing the whole pearl dissolving process. That if the solvent does not completely dissolve them, you will use cohobation.

Take the best Oriental saffron you can find, draw the extract with an excellent spirit of wine according to the art, which you will separate by distillation, & then pass over your saffron two or three times common distilled water, to attract the smell of the spirit of wine & that of saffron, which is disagreeable to some, & when you make the last dry distillation, do it until, so that the essence of the saffron dries out so strongly that it can be pulverized.
Take essence of pearls, essence of antimony flowers & essence of saffron as much of one as of the other, mix everything well together, & put on top of an excellent spirit of wine, which floats two fingers, then let the whole thing digest in BM for 24 hours; finally distill the spirit of wine, and your medicine will be made.
for the main property of this remedy consists in restoring the radical balm. I sometimes added to this composition a little oil of the Sun, which goes into our Nepenthes, and my tincture of salt, which worked wonders.

The Great Panacea or the Polychreste Anodin of Montanus.
The preparation of this remedy consists principally of two chiefs, which are the sulfur of vitriol, and the true essence of gold.
in short, continue this process as for the first time, as long as all your vitriol is converted into sulphur: finally circulate this sulfur with an excellent spirit of wine several times, until the perfect sweetness. Thus is already made a great remedy, which, being philosophically calcined by the aid of an alkalized spirit of wine, is reduced to a liquor suitable for all cachexias, dropsies, intermittent fevers, dysentery, colic, and especially the plague.
As for the essence of gold, which gives the name of polychrest to that of Panacea, it is made in this way.
Take philosopher's water, make of nitre & armoniacal salt, the preparation of which we have said elsewhere, in six ounces of which dissolve one ounce of gold, distill, then iron over the gold lime, three ounces of this new water, & repeat this three times, thus to dissolve one ounce of gold, it takes almost a pound of philosopher's water.
Your Sun being dissolved, have the water distilled from it on the ashes, in a still which is narrower at the bottom than at the top, for it is by this means that the gold will pass better and more easily: take care not to distill until dry, but only in the consistency of honey or syrup, and to renew philosophical water at all times, to the weight of three or four ounces, as we have already said, until finally you see the gold rising with its dissolution. front, & that there remains at the bottom only a white lime, drawing on the greyish.

Then take this well expressed amalgam & put it on the sheaf in a small bowl of earth that holds the fire, & by this means you will find a marvelously attenuated gold lime, very red & very suitable for dissolving in juniper oil for the composition of our Nepenthes. But for the preparation of this polychrest, dissolve it in an excellent spirit of dephlegmated vitriol, until perfection & that it be, if possible, drawn from the vitriol of Hungary, that of Cyprus would be even better because it has the color sapphirine. It should be noted in passing that the vitriolic spirit, just as much better than the salt spirit, has the virtue of attracting and impregnating itself with the single tincture of gold, or solar sulphur, with which it is colored like a ruby,of Spagyrica prepared. Cap. By tinct. Auri.
For the composition of this polychrest, it is necessary to take a part of our sulfur of vitriol, & one of the tincture or essence of gold, which we have just prepared, then mix the whole well, & circulate it with an excellent spirit of wine by various cohobations, thus you will assuredly make a remedy of marvelous sweetness, for what the tincture of gold will greatly soften the sulfur of vitriol, making it better than before, which it will do so much by its own virtue. , than by that of the spirit of wine. After the mixture of these two things, you will separate from the sweet bath the spirit of wine, until the consistency of honey, & then you will have a red matter & of very sweet flavor, of which take two ounces, essence of saffron half ounce,

Reutzius, great Physician of Pomerania, affirms this marvel, that the mere odor of this great remedy binds the spirits of the brain so much, that it first causes a sweet and graceful sleep, what is more, suddenly soothes all sorts of pains: one never gives for the cure of the greatest diseases, but the dose of two grains, which one dissolves in wine, or in some other proper liquor: thus one not only fortifies nature but one redoubles its radical balm, so that one can truly say that it is the only polychrest, the only panacea, & the true medicine for all ills, & to put it in a word, the great Arcanum, which purges, incises, expels, monifies & robs everything together, the excellent Elixir, & the sovereign magisterium, which renews the whole body by penetrating it to the marrows, & uniting itself with all the natural,vital & animal spirits, delivers the principal parts of the human body from all the great evils which can attack them, & above all from epilepsies, apoplexies, paralysis, contractures, syncopes, palpitations, & from all strange & feverish heats, as also from all pains & obstructions, which cause cachexias, dropsies, hysterical & similar passions, in short, it is the universal medicine, & the greatest after Azoc, which can produce even greater wonders, if one adds to it tinctures of coral & all animating salt. delivers the principal parts of the human body from all the great evils which can attack them, & especially from epilepsies, apoplexies, paralyzes, contractures, syncopes, palpitations, & from all strange & feverish heats, as also from all pains & obstructions, which cause cachexias,dropsies, hysterical passions & similar, in short it is the universal medicine, & the greatest after Azoc, which can produce wonders s still greater, if we add to them the tinctures of coral & all-animating salt.

ions, which cause cachexias, dropsies, hysterical passions & similar, in short it is the universal medicine, & the greatest after Azoc, which can produce wonders s still greater, if we add to them the tinctures of coral & all-animating salt.as also of all the pains & obstructions, which cause cachexias, dropsies,hysterical & similar passions, in short it is the universal medicine, & the greatest after Azoc, which can produce even greater wonders, if one adds to it tinctures of coral & all animating salt.which can produce even greater wonders, if one adds to it tinctures of coral & all animating salt.which can produce even greater wonders, if one adds to it tinctures of coral & all animating salt.

( The continuation of the "Secrets Particuliers" is reproduced in Latin and not in French in the 1641 edition of the "Collection of the most curious and rare secrets". The table of contents appearing at the end of this volume, resuming the "Treatise on Metallic Medicine", the "Treatise on Mineral Medicine" and the "Secrets Particuliers", is again written in French - LAT)