to the Neo-Platonic school.  My chief labor in this book was most accurately to notice the obscure hints by which the author refers from one passage to another, and thus promises to reveal what he conceals, and to mark down on the margin the number of the page where such passages as should explain each other were to be found.  But even thus the book still remained dark and unintelligible enough, except that one at last studied one’s self into a certain terminology, and, by using it according to one’s own fancy, believed that one was, at any rate, saying, if not understanding, something.  The work mentioned before makes very honorable mention of its predecessors, and we were incited to investigate those original sources themselves.  We turned to the works of Theophrastus, Paracelsus, and Basilius Valentinus, as well as to those of Helmont, Starkey, and others, whose doctrines and directions, resting more or less on nature and imagination, we endeavored to see into and follow out.  I was particularly pleased with the “Aurea Catena Homeri,” in which nature, though perhaps in fantastical fashion, is represented in a beautiful combination; and thus sometimes by ourselves, sometimes together, we employed much time on these singularities, and spent the evenings of a long winter—­during which I was compelled to keep my chamber—­very agreeably, since we three (my mother being included) were more delighted with these secrets than we could have been at their elucidation.

In the mean time, a very severe trial was preparing for me:  for a disturbed, and, one might even say, for certain moments, destroyed digestion, excited such symptoms, that, in great tribulation, I thought I should lose my life; and none of the remedies applied would produce any further effect.  In this last extremity my distressed mother constrained the embarrassed physician with the greatest vehemence to come out with his universal medicine.  After a long refusal, he hastened home at the dead of night, and returned with a little glass of crystallized dry salt, which was dissolved in water, and swallowed by the patient.  It had a decidedly alkaline taste.  The salt was scarcely taken than my situation appeared relieved; and from that moment the disease took a turn which, by degrees, led to my recovery.  I need not say how much this strengthened and heightened our faith in our physician, and our industry to share in such a treasure.

My friend, who, without parents or brothers and sisters, lived in a large, well-situated house, had already before this begun to purchase herself a little air-furnace, alembics, and retorts of moderate size, and, in accordance with the hints of Welling, and the significant signs of our physician and master, operated principally on iron, in which the most healing powers were said to be concealed, if one only knew how to open it.  And as the volatile salt which must be produced made a great figure in all the writings with which we were acquainted; so, for these operations, alkalies also were required, which, while they flowed away into the air, were to unite with these superterrestrial things, and at last produce, per se, a mysterious and excellent neutral salt.