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

by Arthur Edward Waite; Francis Barrett

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.