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Lives of alchemystical philosophers / To which is added a bibliography of alchemy and hermetic philosophy cover

Lives of alchemystical philosophers / To which is added a bibliography of alchemy and hermetic philosophy

Chapter 36: LEONARDI FIORAVANTI.
By Arthur Edward Waite
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About This Book

A compendium of biographical sketches of historical alchemists accompanied by analytical essays on the principles and practice of the magnum opus, a discussion of spiritual or psychal chemistry, and a critical catalogue of hermetic literature. The author revises and supplements earlier compilations, compresses archaic passages, and offers a concise physical theory and practical outline for readers new to alchemy. The volume includes textual emendations, bibliographical notes, and an expanded alphabetical bibliography of alchemical and hermetic writings, alongside accounts of individual adepts and selected treatises that illuminate the philosophical and operative traditions of the art.

LEONARDI FIORAVANTI.

Doctor, surgeon, and alchemist of the sixteenth century, this Italian was a voluminous author, who is best known by his “Summary of the Arcana of Medicine, Surgery, and Alchemy,” published in octavo at Venice in 1571, and which has been reprinted several times. It contains an application of Hermetic methods and principles to the science of medicine, but the author’s account of the petra philosophorum shows the designation to be of a purely arbitrary kind, for it is a mixture of mercury, nitre, and other substances, intended to act on the stomach, and has no connection with the transmuting lapis of the alchemical sages.