In 1666 Johann Friedrich Helvetius, physician to the Prince of Orange, received a visit from a mysterious stranger who showed him the philosophers’ stone. Here he tells how, with a tiny particle of the powder, he transmuted a mass of lead into gold that withstood every assay, addressing his account to the inspectors of the Vulcanian anatomy. It survives in a quaint seventeenth-century English translation.
One of the most famous transmutation narratives in the history of alchemy, fascinating as a record of what educated men once believed. Download the free EPUB.