SOLUTION
OF
ALCHEMICAL PROBLEM

UNIVERSAL MEDICINE
AND
PHILOSOPHER'S STONE

PARIS
GERMER-BAILLIÈRE, EDITOR
RUE DE L'ECOLE-DE-MEDECINE, 17

1863

A. MEMBERS
OF ALL LEARNED SOCIETIES.



Gentlemen,

Why, I asked myself, would I not communicate today to all the studious men who, without prejudice, without bias, seek the truth by study, what it has been possible for me to see it the same way?
If, for thirteen years, I thought I had to, in France and abroad, ensure against any personal, political, social eventuality, the disclosure, for the future, of the alchemical secret, by making, to several personalities, the intimate confessions of my disappointments, my hopes and the discoveries of my research, why, today, the fruits of this so rich part of my life, sufferings and joys, would they not be brought to this table of communion universal, the publicity given to the silent and secret labors of man seeking the truth?
Why, if, in this way, I can contribute to something more lasting, should I not do it? Didn't the microscopic animalcules also contribute to form the earth's crust?
And won't the superior intelligences know how to make intact the products of the inferior intelligences just as the larger infusorium knows how to reject intact, after absorption made, the smaller infusorian?
To you also, gentlemen, the communication of the two letters which I thought to address, in principle, only to a high scientific celebrity.



SECOND LETTER

Sir,

Neglecting, to abbreviate, all that, purely of a moral and philosophical order, would relate to the subject of this letter, I believed it essential, in view of my previous one, to communicate to you some new considerations, the facts of which will be recognized, by you, as well. accurate than historical.
You know, sir: 1° that the universal medicine and the transmutatory powder are the two results promised to the solution of the alchemical problem; 2° that these two results have been affirmed since the most remote times, in all the languages ​​of the civilizations which have succeeded one another down to us; set of confirmations constituting what is called the tradition; 3° that this tradition, which remained secret, was transmitted in the first ages only veiled under the symbolic, religious or political ceremonial, and was only taught under figurative veils, until, continuing, finally , to reveal itself from age to age, it arrives at. us in the various forms of chemical operations.
Faced with this great affirmation given at different times and even simultaneously when there was no communication established between the authors ; It has, I admit, been difficult for me to admit that this tradition, which has already descended to the earliest historical times, could have gone through, intact in its unity, all the transformations of human societies up to the present day, to end up in n be just a REVERIE! ! ! — especially when we see that those who transmit it are the organizers and founders of these powerful theocratic governments, as they later become their religious or political reformers, respective.
Is it good now to add that the details of the operations described so minutely oblige the mind to recognize in them the experience gained from the thing done and seen?...
To these considerations, I will add two remarks to which I have the honor to call your attention. 1° It is that in the sum total of the question, you will recognize that the two results promised to the solution of the problem have not always been known. Indeed, it is only much later that tradition mentions the transmutatory powder, in other words the philosopher's stone, to distinguish it from the first result, universal medicine .
2° The second, due to the results of my experiments, which makes me notice it, has gone unnoticed until now, and is very important, here it is: We make sure, by following chronologically the history of alchemy geographically that: the tradition coming out of countries with volcanoes, sees all the more diminishing the authors who transmit it to us as they move away from the equator.
This double coincidence of precise and historical facts, SIMULTANEOUSLY COMPLEMENTARY and CONFIRMATIVE, offers powerful help in removing the difficulties that have remained unexplained and contradictory until now.
But we must finish this letter, already too long, and yet so short! by saying that with geognosy, it is possible to resolve the difficulties presented against the solution of the alchemical problem, it is this subject that I intended to communicate to you. This solution could become very important, for example, to facilitate the explanation of the immense quantity of organisms which have formed certain parts of the earth's crust, since their remains, of which these terrestrial parts are constituted, are recognized as metallic bases; and, because their great masses seem to respond to the enormous quantities of the mineral vapours, of the metallic acids projected into space by the eruptions of the time plutonian.
Now, since these mineral vapors, these metallic acids preceded and remained congeners, in a way, adequate to the formation and existence of the polyp, the mollusc, etc., these beginnings of organic vitality, I believe that alchemy does not 'being that the art of vaporizing metals, of invoicing metallic acids, should , in this respect again, be taken seriously organic life , as well as the gigantic form of those animals and plants of antediluvian times.
I believed, sir, that I had to communicate these considerations to you in order to establish, in my opinion, that seeking the alchemical solution is not madness, to prove to you that by asking you to take my proposal into consideration, I remained with conviction in the feelings that my veneration bears to your profound knowledge and devotes religiously to your person.

I have the honor to be your servant


THIRD LETTER

Sir,

Attacking the question body to body, in total of the two alchemical results, are they really possible, or are they only a bait imagined to indirectly oblige man to seek 1° in the products of nature remedies for his suffering; 2° in the properties of the bodies of the elements of well-being, of the sources of industry, of commerce, of wealth?...
One could already object that the varied explanations and different uses which the authors assign to the discoveries which they make in seeking the two results exclude the idea of ​​an ideal unity; but that would perhaps not be a sufficient enough objection; also it is from the totality of the opposing difficulties which remain to be resolved that this conjecture will be annihilated.
As for the specious allegation that: modern science and the skill of these learned operators having been unable to solve the problem, proves that it is not; it is only a veritable rolling of words; pure phraseological noise, because the real difficulties are:
1° The multiplicity of the raw materials used and which, seen en masse, in their total together have brought (in the real authors) the solution of the two results, in spite of their difference, a difference which is, it is true, only apparent , as will be seen.
2. The multiplicity of operations which, considered synoptically, produce; this solution, despite the differences, the very oppositions which are revealed to the observer.
3° The multiplicity of devices which, examined and considered as a whole, proves an indisputable fact, namely that it was absolutely impossible for the authors of the ancient traditions to have these devices, since the tools for making them were not known only a long time later.
4° The impossibility of chemical analysis, so exact today, of recognizing, in the sources indicated by the alchemist authors, the products which they have affirmed to be contained therein, since they teach how to extract them.
This fourth difficulty is obviously the most serious; also it is with it that I believe I must begin in order to lift the veil which, by resolving it, will cause the others to fall by way of a natural and logical consequence. In effect :
You know like me, sir, that storm water, the waters of the equinoxes, especially dew, as well as a certain sweet salt (natrum) which, according to these ancient authors, was no longer found except in the southern Egypt and Abyssinia, genera and species of salts which had to be fetched from rocks or dry land before sunrise, because it vaporized under the influence of its first rays ; similar in this to that species of plant flos coeli, nostoch, which dries up there and which, nowadays, instead of absorbing mineral vapours, only imbibes water for the most part; are, with this mucilaginous substance .in the first alchemical traditions, so many natural sources from which one must extract the material which, subtilized and fixed, must give universal medicine. Now, if in our time and in our climates, chemistry has incontestably proved by analysis that these various natural sources contained only a very small quantity of mineral and metallic elements, moreover without power to produce the results affirmed by tradition, she spoke the truth. But the ancient tradition also spoke true, and here is why:
1° Seeing that this tradition comes out of countries with volcanoes and that the authors diminish all the more as they move away from the equator, and that to this fact we add that; That at the equator is the maximum of the centrifugal force of the earth, it will be understood that in the countries which border it, there is a greater projection on its surface and in its atmosphere of mineral and metallic gases; therefore, a presence of related products.
2° And if, considering the great antiquity of the alchemical tradition, we refer only to the last remains of the so-called volcanic times, we will easily understand that the various natural sources mentioned could have been effectively enriched with the mineral and metallic products thrown still in enormous quantities in the atmosphere by the eruptions of volcanoes then not extinct.
3° And if we refused the previous explanation, it would still remain to cite, as being the last remains, the natural sources of our mineral waters, of our thermal waters which restore health and bring back to life so many sick people each year . Then, I will add that it is possible with a stove, a retort and a container to produce artificially what nature produced.
Now, this point being established, all the other difficulties will fall away.
Indeed, as you know, sir, of simple digestion and simple distillation, the only operations described in the earliest traditions, — we see, in the following age, described the construction of magnets and trappings , to attract mineral gases and metallic acids still widespread in the atmosphere; - then to these trappings succeeds, I will say the third age of Alchemy, giving for instruction to volatilize the salts naturally diffused on the sphere; invoice of spirits and oils which causes as a consequence the invoice of our acids, which in their turn determine the possibility of these long, painful and expensive operations on metals; these last operations constitute the fourth age of the tradition.
What will give the explanation of this historical progress of the simple becoming complex like a new counter-proof, it is (first fact) that the traditions coming out of the regions with volcanoes which border the equator, speak only (second fact) universal medicine; it is in the Sanskrit language the amrila, drink of immortality, it is the celestial water, the nectar of the gods, etc., etc., of the other languages; late ; no doubt when it was found, thanks to the innumerable experiments that human curiosity had to make in the course of the centuries of the application of universal medicine to all bodies.
From this double fact, I say, brought closer to the primitive simplicity of operations joining to this other fact, the facilities of having, in these remote times, the raw materials, it seems to result irrevocably that:
1° In principle, man has been led by two occasional causes, hunger or thirst , to what is now called the hermetic science, alchemy. This science was for him only the acquired knowledge of the properties of several substances from which he drew energy, vigor, health and prolongation of his existence.
2. That these substances have been generally diffused over the parts of the globe near the equator, principally on the mountains, in the countries with volcanoes, and on the banks of the rivers; these geographical localities preserved in the historical tradition as sacred places, places of pilgrimage, are therefore still here in conformity with the alchemical tradition; as they still remain in conformity with the facts of the geognostic history of our globe. This conclusion will now quite naturally explain why one sees in the alchemical tradition the primitively simple modes becoming more complicated up to the work on metals. The geognostic facts coming here again to give him a new confirmation, namely that:
3. Man no longer finding these substances on earth, has sought them in the atmosphere; then, no longer finding them in sufficient quantity or sufficient energy, he sought them in salts, in minerals, and finally even in metals: and operations carried out on the latter until the Middle Ages, a period quite relatively modern, came out chemistry. Also, this is what explains his way of being entirely analytical.

I conclude :


The so complex but so connected whole which comes to connect what seemed so contradictory, by explaining what seemed inexplicable, proving moreover that it was impossible that the facts were otherwise than they appeared, is THE HISTORICAL SOLUTION OF THE ALCHEMICAL PROBLEM .
Now, the CHARACTERISTIC and ESSENTIAL fact of the study which has just been made to demonstrate the possibility of a universal medicine, is to see: the mineral and metallic vapours , RECOGNIZED BY MODERN SCIENCE, having preceded and having remained congeneric and adequate to these vast rudimentary masses of organic life, from the polypal calcareous soils, molluscs , crustaceans , to continue in the frameworks of the vegetable kingdom as well as in osteology, to show, even today, their vitalizing forces until in our mineral and thermal waters virtualizing our debilitated organizations.
Why then, faced with this immense and majestic affirmation of nature, should the wise man not seek to extract these metallic vapors which appear to be one of the SINE QUA NON conditions of organic life? And if the alchemists claimed to have reduced them in liquid forms called, by them, mountain vinegar, mercurial spirit, philosophical spirit-of-wine, mercury of the wise, etc., etc., as in the solid form of a powder shiny, white or red, called universal medicine, why would anyone want to believe that these famous men would have been liars, impostors, demons? Oh! Magnificent shadows! my past sorrows are too small for the joy I feel in doing you justice!
Receive, sir, etc.

TO MEMBERS OF ALL LEARNED SOCIETIES

Gentlemen,

If, by what precedes, I have proven that the search for the alchemical solution is not madness, I will hasten to add that it can become so in the individual who, undertaking it, will convince himself must certainly succeed.
Indeed, these experiments are quite numerous and require a lot of time. The calculation made of the time rigorously required for all the manipulations indicated shows no less than three years to arrive at first to invoice universal medicine and then to bring it to the state of fermented and multiplied transmutatory powder.
Accordingly, those who would aspire to this dual purpose should expect to devote a longer time to it.
Also it is this length of time, carrying with it the expenses which are relative to it, which makes and makes this search, if not mad for a single individual, always reckless, risky, inconsistent, if he does not enjoy a fortune large enough to allow him to spend only a part of his income there.
If I formulate this advice so clearly, it is out of charity, because experience has given me the sad reason for it; and I confess that it was no less necessary than the double coincidence of my young age then (19) with the possession of eighteen manuscript quarto volumes of 1700, summarizing the theories and giving with an extremely meticulous remarkable the practical details of the processes of all the principal alchemists, to explain to me, since, how I was able to devote to it, with a fortune, a whole youth, by years of persevering, obstinate, extremely painful and tiring work , as much for the body as for the spirit.
But the providential order BY FACTS LEADS INDIVIDUALS, and
CONSEQUENCES OF THESE FACTS DETERMINE THEIR RESPECTIVE DESTINY.
For the rest, I don't think I have the right to complain, since so much effort expended serves today to show the solution of the alchemical problem, a solution provided by the very truth of its own historical facts.
It remains, gentlemen, I know, to presently show this solution in its chemical reasons in an analysis that can be made even shorter than our historical summary. This work is done, and a long time ago, by examining and comparing the operations and materials used by each of the four ages of alchemy, it was possible for me to deduce the chemical reasons for on the one hand like the physical reasons on the other, according to the point of view of modern scientific theories.
But would giving publicity to such a practical summary, to such an explicit presentation, be wise, prudent?
You will answer, yourselves, gentlemen, after having heard me after having read the publication which will probably follow this one.
The alchemical object, seen as I consider it, only under the one and only point of view of VIRTUALIZING AGENT, ANIMATING AGENT, deserves that we work in search of its possession. This is why, gentlemen, I thought of inviting you to form a Society to protect this research.
Indeed, the disadvantages that I have pointed out, for this enterprise made by isolated individuals, would cease to exist under the aegis of a Society; and, its practical study being based on the power of a prince, of a high personality or on a force, collective, could never become harmful to anyone. It would always benefit science, if only through the errors or faults that even the most skilful operators attached to it might commit.
To propose to you, gentlemen, a practical execution of the alchemical problem is a serious matter. Also, I had to, before addressing this proposal to you, put myself in a position to be able to present the possibility to you by first material proofs, and this is what I did.
These initial proofs, although still weak, owing to the lack of time that should be devoted to them, are nevertheless already sufficient. They are moreover all that my resources allow me, as new sacrifices made to confirm the truth of the alchemical tradition; that was the goal I wanted to achieve while waiting.
It is up to you, gentlemen, to see if it suits you to pursue the consequences. I will offer your Company the data of my manuscripts, and, if necessary, to your operators, the advice of my acquired experience. Receive, gentlemen, my most eager civilities.
Victor

TO APPEAR:

UNIVERSAL MEDICINE

CONTENTS


Its physiological powers over the vegetable kingdom and over the animal kingdom; the marvels that tradition brings back. Its effects on psychology, its benefits and its dangers.


SECOND PART.

CONFIRMATIVE HISTORICAL STUDY.

1° Proofs furnished in favor of its reality by the theocratic institution; — explanation of the ancient necessity of the terms BLESSING, ELECTION, CURSE, initiator, initiate, profane;
2 ° By the tradition of symbolism, mythology and those said to be sacred in the religions of the great civilizations;
3. By their old ortophrenic establishments, in which one experimented and pursued the researches of the vitalism and the virtualism of the psychological germs and the phrenological forces; — initiation into the mysteries of magic and the Kabbalah, — college from which issued messis, prophets, magi, sages, philosophers;
4° By the explanation of these religious expressions: purification, ablution, anointing, baptism; — communion, redemption, sanctification, deification;
5. By the facts of relative supernaturalism accompanying the decadence of religions; decadences of religions so parallel to the decadences of alchemy that our...

...CONCLUSION .

Values ​​that remain to be drawn from the ancient temporal and spiritual powers of religions.