A course of chymistry. Containing an easie method of preparing those chymical medicins which are used in physick. With curious remarks and useful discourses upon each preparation, for the benefit of such who desire to be instructed in the knowledge of this art. By Nicholas Lemery, M.D. The second edition very much inlarged. Translated from the fifth edition in the French, by Walter Harris, M.D. Fellow of the College of Physicians.
London: printed by R[oger]. N[orton]. for Walter Kettilby, at the Bishop's-Head in S. Paul's Church-yard, 1686.
Price: $7,500.00
Octavo: 18.3 x 11.8 cm. [28], [8], 548, [16] pp. Collation: A8, a6, π4, B-Z8, Aa-Nn8, Oo2. The gathering π4 consists of 3 full-page engravings and explanatory letterpress). With the initial imprimatur leaf and the final advert leaf.
SECOND ENGLISH EDITION (THE FIRST WITH ILLUSTRATIONS), translated from the fifth French edition.
Bound in contemporary English calf, rebacked, some wear and crackling to the boards. A very good copy with a small rust hole on the title and two others on leaf Mm4. Some light foxing and minor soiling. The first three leaves are a little dusty. The three engraved plates depict the furnaces, vessels, and other apparatus used in the operations described. In this copy there are eight pages of English manuscript notes, in a near contemporary hand, with medicinal recipes, chemical preparations, instructions for making imitation gemstones, distillations from human blood, etc. (See below for a more detailed description.).
The first illustrated edition in English of Nicolas Lémery’s popular chemistry textbook, translated by his former student, the physician Walter Harris. Harris lived with and studied under Lémery while a medical student in Paris. Following Harris’s return to England in 1676, the two maintained a relationship and Lémery sent subsequent editions of his “Cours de chymie” to Harris. Harris’s translation of the first French edition appeared in 1677. He may have obtained his copy of that edition directly from Lémery, who was selling copies from his house while Harris was in France. In 1680 Harris published a supplement compiled from new material (from the second and third French editions) that Lémery had sent to him in England. For the present edition, Harris revised his earlier translation, incorporated much of the supplement, and included substantial further additions.
This is also the first English edition to describe experiments on the preparation and properties of phosphorus and other luminescent materials. This edition includes practical instructions for preparing chemical medicines and explanations of chemical reactions in terms of the shapes and movements of particles. The book includes a good number of medicines specifically for women’s health (see below.)
“One of the most influential chemists of his time, Lémery (1645-1715) condemned the obscure alchemical mysticism of contemporary authors. He gave lectures on the principles of chemistry in a clear and simple way, including experimental demonstrations, from his manufacturing laboratory in Paris. The lectures were attended by crowds of people from Paris, other parts of France, and abroad. The ‘Cours de chymie’, the textbook of his course of lectures, enjoyed unprecedented success for a work of its kind. The first and earlier editions of the ‘Cours’ were sold by Lémery from his house in Paris and are now very rare. He was careful to revise, correct, and update at least eleven editions himself, the last appearing in 1716.”(Neville II, p. 39)
“Lémery’s teaching and textbook on chemistry, the ‘Cours de chymie’, owed their success to his clear and entertaining presentation of chemistry in corpuscular-mechanist terms. His adoption of mechanical modes of explanation brought the French chemical teaching tradition out of its earlier Paracelsian-Helmontian inheritance into the mainstream of contemporary Cartesian natural philosophy…
“In 1674 [Lémery] secured his professional status by purchasing the office of apothecary to the king and grand prévôt of France. . . . During the next seven years he established a highly successful pharmaceutical business, specializing in patent medicines. In addition, he gained a considerable reputation as a teacher of chemistry by his private courses. These courses not only catered to the professional needs of pharmacy apprentices but also attracted a large audience from fashionable Parisian society interested in semi-popular scientific expositions.”(DSB)
The Manuscript Recipes:
The book has eight pages of English manuscript pharmaceutical and chemical recipes in a near-contemporary hand. Seven of the recipes are explicitly attributed to "Dr. Willis" (probably the English physician Thomas Willis, 1621–1675), including a preparation of iron and of sulphur, an elixir, and an ammoniacal spirit with amber. Other entries are unattributed or bear the names of other 16th and 17th c. scientists, such as Paracelsus and Lazare Rivière.
One of the recipes attributed to "Dr. Willis" is for an elixir of aloes, myrrh, and saffron, extracted with a menstruum of spirit of salt and a rectified spirit of wine distilled together, and given in doses of 8 to 20 drops. There are also preparations of iron made into powders and syrups; a syrup and tincture of sulphur; and a spirit, volatile salt, and oil of sal ammoniac distilled with amber. The iron recipes describe the treatment of filings with tartar or sal ammoniac and their subsequent preparation for medicinal use. The syrup of iron is made with black-cherry water and rosemary water. One powder is described as gently purgative.
A preparation headed “Panacea Paracelsi" produces a medicinal powder from the scoria of regulus of antimony. The compiler describes the powder as causing vomiting, purging gently, and being “soveraign upon” the symptoms of smallpox. “Laudanum Liquidum Helmontii” is an opium preparation made with quince or lemon juice, fermented with barm (yeast), flavoured with spices, and concentrated by distillation and given at 14 or 15 drops. Its heading associates it with either Jan Baptista van Helmont or his son, Franciscus Mercurius, both of whom were associated with laudanum preparations. A second liquid laudanum, headed “Laudanum Liquidum Tartarisatum,” extracts the opium with tincture of tartar, adds saffron, cloves, cinnamon, and nutmeg, and is given at 14 or 15 drops.
A preparation headed “Sal Volatile Oleosum Riverii,” after the French physician Lazare Rivière (1589–1655)—combines cinnamon, nutmeg, cloves, caraway, cardamom, and saffron with tartar, sal ammoniac, and spirit of wine. The mixture is digested and then distilled until all the salt is dissolved in the head. It is followed by a second version made from sweet marjoram, rosemary, broom, thyme, bay, and nutmegs, with pot ashes allowed in place of tartar. Its particular medicinal use is not stated. The final entry, for tincture of roses, refers the reader to “Sylvij Prax.,” probably the "Praxeos medicae idea nova" of Franciscus de le Boë Sylvius (1614–1672). Mixed with a preparation of coral, it is recommended for bleeding from the nose or mouth.
Other entries include Ens Veneris ("Essence of Venus"), a yellowish preparation made from the washed residue of Danzig vitriol and sal ammoniac. Æthiops mineralis, a black powder made by grinding mercury with sulphur, is recommended as a sudorific in the pox or scurvy. There is also a compound “apoplectic balsam” containing aromatic oils, ambergris, musk, and civet, with leaf gold recommended for colouring it. The balsam is identified by its heading as a remedy for apoplexy. A preparation made by calcining twenty live toads (“in May they are best”) is expressly recommended against plague, while its black intermediate powder is prescribed for a quartan ague, taken three mornings together. A separate recipe describes drying and distilling blood from a healthy person to obtain oil, salt, and spirit, without stating their intended medicinal use.
The non-medicinal preparations include “mosaic gold”, made from tin and other ingredients, and imitation gemstones colored to resemble sapphires, emeralds, amethysts, and topazes. The gemstone recipe includes instructions for adjusting colors that prove too pale or too dark and melting the mixture again.
Women’s health:
The printed text includes a good number of medicines specifically for women’s health (for regulating the menstrual cycle, both to bring on suppressed ‘terms’ and to stop their ‘immoderate flux’; for easing and hastening labor and expelling the after-birth; for clearing the complexion; and, most numerous of all, for ‘fits of the mother’ and ‘hysteria’). Among them are iron-based tinctures of Mars, Salt of Saturn, coral, amber, Oil of Cinnamon, myrrh, Oil of Guaiacum, ambergris, and a whole range of foul-smelling oils for women to smell during fits. Lémery also adds his own theory of why such smells calm ‘diseases of the matrix.’ He dismisses tin’s supposed virtue against ‘Diseases of the Liver and Matrix’ as ‘only imaginary,’ doubts that musk or civet laid on the navel does any good, and warns women against rubbing vermilion on their cheeks (since it can cause mercury poisoning).
ESTC R30931; Wing (CD-ROM, 1996), L1039; Neville (The Roy G. Neville Historical Chemical Library: An Annotated Catalogue) II p. 44