.Rare sixth edition (sextum aucta & renovata) of this popular compendium of distillation and other alchemical processes by the German alchemist and metallurgist Conrad Khunrath (1555-1613), first published in 1594 and much enlarged in 1605 (Ferguson I, p. 461). It went through at least eight editions, the last in 1703. The German text is divided into tracts on various substances and chemicals, including clays, gums, liquors and spirits, the second part dedicated to distillation of waters, salts and oils. Occasional brief sections attribute Khunrath s recipes to the treatment of specific diseases, such as melancholy, plague and gonorrhoea.. ..An associate of the German physician and alchemist Philip Theophrastus von Hoffenheim, better known as Paracelsus, Khunrath was strongly influenced by Paracelsian ( spagyric ) medicine and uses several of Paracelsus s recipes here, such as those for Theophrastian balsam. However, his reference to Georg Agricola and Conrad Gesner confirms the influence also of metallurgical knowledge on the development of chemistry. Although Khunrath, as his contemporaries were doing, occasionally attributed cures to God s blessing [as he does in the preface] or the effects of the signs of the zodiac and the planets, his book represents a masterpiece of clear, practical prescriptions and in the 17th century appears to have been considered a storehouse of information on curing (Dictionary of Scientific Biography (1981), vol. VII, p. 355)..
