[Rarebooks] fa: 1692 ATHENIAN MERCURY - On the PHILOSOPHERS STONE & TRANSMUTATION OF METALS

[Ardwight Chamberlain]

Listed now, along with other antiquarian scientific works, auction ending Sunday, September 15. More details and images can be found at the URL below or by searching under the seller name arch_in_la.

http://tinyurl.com/mad63yy

Thanks,
Ardwight Chamberlain
L.A.


The Athenian Mercury. Vol. 6, Numb. 4. [AND] Vol. 8, Numb. 12.  London: Printed for John Dunton at the Raven in the Poultrey, 1692. Two sheets, folio (32.5 x 19.5 cm.; 12 3/4 x 7 3/4 in.), printed on both sides. Light wear and small pinholes to the left margins; the second number with browning and a crease to one corner.

Two separate issues of this popular late seventeenth-century English periodical, the first newspaper to use the question-and-answer format. In the first of these issues, a reader asks: Is there any such thing as the Philosophers Stone?, to which the editors reply dismissively, We have already laughed at this Question...[etc.] The second issue includes a query on a similar theme: You have in some of your Mercuries ridicul'd the Transmutation of Metals, which may certainly be effected both by Natural and Artificial Means; by the last, as is daily seen by the Practice of Chymists; the first, by Rivers, Springs, &c. There is a vast Mine in Hungary of pure Copper, in which there are several Springs running, if there be put into 'em any old or bad Iron, in 14 days it turns into excellent Copper; the truth of this is attested by Dr. Brown, in his Book of Travels, who himself was an Eye-Witness, and who has now some of this Transmuted Mettal by him, which he brought along with him: Query, What Use cou'd a Virtuoso make of this Water ? The reply begins: We have in some of our former Papers given our Opinion of the impossibility of changing baser Mettals into Gold...

Other items of interest include discussions of the properties of Opium, the efficacy of "Drinking the Bath Waters for the Gout", and a mathematical puzzle in which a reader asks the editors to calculate "how long I was walking from Covent Garden to the Royal Exchange" from the time of day showing on the various London clocks he passed on his journey (Somerset-House, St. Clements, Mr. Knib's Dyal in Fleet-street, etc.)