Prelude to Chemistry

Read, John. Prelude to chemistry an outline of alchemy, its literature and relationships. London G. Bell, 1939 reprint, Cambridge (MA) MIT Press, 1966. xxiv, 328p. 

Most notably in The triumphal ehariot of antimony, a work attributed to a 15th-cent Benedictine monk, Basil Valentine, but written much later and first printed in 1599. For the su estion that this work was indebted to Suchten, see John Read, Prelude to Chemistry An Outline of Alehemy, its Literature and Relationships Mass., 1966 [1936]), 187. For further discussion of works attributed to Basil Valentine, see... 

Read, John, Prelude to Chemistry An Outline of Alchemy, its Literature and Relationships (Cambridge, Mass., 1966 [1936]). 

J. Read, Prelude to Chemistry, London, 1936. The Alchemist in Life, Literature and Art, London, 1947. 

A History of Glass, Pilkington Glass Museum, Saint Helens, 1990. Prelude to Chemistry, J. Read, G. Bell Son, London, 1961. 

Read has pointed out that in modern literature on alchemy, mercury is often incorrectly associated with soul and sulfur incorrectly associated with spirit. (Read, Prelude to Chemistry, p. 297, n. 47.)... 

Appended to the Splendor Solis, trans. K[ohn]. The translation erroneously reports the date as 1498 however, it is 1598. It is also reprinted in Read, Prelude to Chemistry, pp. 69-74. The K[ohn] translation is reprinted in the Appendix. 

Read, Prelude to Chemistry, pp. 167-8. (We will discuss fiery-water in the commentary on Plate 11-1.) Abraham, Dictionary, p. 190. 

According to Read, A particularly intriguing association was that of the cat with Luna, or sophic mercury because the pupil of a cat s eye was said to expand when the moon was waxing and to contract when it was waning (Prelude to Chemistry, p. 103). 

Quoted in Read, Prelude to Chemistry, p. 157. von Franz, Aurora Consurgens, p. 206. 

From Gloria Mundi, dated 1526, quoted in Read, Prelude to Chemistry p. 130. 

Read, Prelude To Chemistry, MacMillan, New York, 1937, pp. 200-202 240-241 Isee Plate 47 in this book, which is taken from the book by Michael Maier (1687) titled Secretions Naturae Scrutmium Chymicum],... 

John Read, for instance. Professor of Chemistry, in his Prelude to Chemistry, an Outline of Alchemy, dismisses the writing of the Hollandus pair in a few words, possibly because their clarity of detail led him to suspect a blind. Alas, how blind sometimes are our experts themselves. 

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