Catalogue of Latin and Vernacular Alchemical Manuscripts in the United States and Canada

摘要

Mr. Wilson began work in 1935 and finished on May 30, 1938. He has produced not merely a catalogue but an analysis and page by page description of seventy-nine manuscripts dating from the thirteenth to the nineteenth centuries in Latin and the vernacular languages. Oriental manuscripts have not been included although a number are known to exist in the United States. Three medical libraries, the Army Medical Library, with one, the Boston Medical Library with two and the Osler Medical Library with three, are owners of manuscripts, six in number. The Alchemical Compendium, 1464- 1468, Bamberg, Germany, owned by the Boston Medical Library, and containing over 800 recipes, and 22 diagrams of apparatus, is one of the important manuscripts in the catalogue. One hundred and eight pages are given to the description of this work. According to Mr. Wilson the compilation is, in its own right, a work of erudition, with considerable recognition of theproblem of textual criticism. In 1582 there was published a work of Paracelsus entitled Manuale Chemicum, id est Thesaurus Chemicorum, particularium experimentorium which is in many respects a companion piece to the Boston Medical Library manuscript. Both are chiefly in Latin, but partly in German, of the same or closely related dialects; both have a tendency to group the recipes on a given subject together; each gives cross-references from one part of the collection to another; and some of the actual recipes are the same.