Page:Chronicles of pharmacy (Volume 1).djvu/191

 these. These three essentials came to he tabulated thus:—

Unpleasant and bitter. Sweet. Acid. Body. Soul. Spirit. Matter. Form. Idea. Patient. Agent. Informant or movent. Art. Nature. Intelligence. Sense. Judgment. Intellect. Material. Spiritual. Glorious.

This is taken from Beguin, who explains that the mercury, sulphur, and salt of this classification are not those "mixt and concrete bodies such as are vulgarly sold by merchants. Mercury, which combines the elements of air and water, Sulphur represents Fire, and Salt, Earth." "But the said principles, to speak properly, are neither bodies; because they are plainly spiritual, by reason of the influx of celestial seeds, with which they are impregnated: nor spirits, because corporeal, but they participate of either nature; and have been insignized by Phylosophers with various names, or at the least unto them they have alluded these."

Instances of the combination of these principles are given. If you burn green woods, you first have a wateriness, mercury; then there goes forth an oleaginous substance easily inflammable, sulphur; lastly, a dry and terrestrial substance remains, salt. Milk contains a sulphurous buttery substance; mercurial, whey; saline, cheese. Eggs: white, mercury, yolk, sulphur, shell, salt. Antimony regulus, mercury, red sulphur conceiving flame; a salt which is vomitive.

Nowhere do you get these principles pure. Mercury (the metal) contains both sulphur and salt; so with the others.

Becker, the predecessor of Stahl, was not quite