Catalogue Entry: ALCH00039
Excerpts from Jodocus a Rhe [Johannes Rhenanus], with transcripts of letters to Dr. John Twysden [Twisden] from 'A.C. [leg. A.O.?] Faber' and notes on a work by Faber. In Latin.
Custodial History
Bought at the Sotheby sale by C.A. Stonehill for £13 and offered to Keynes on 7 September 1936 for £20; Stonehill informed Yahuda on 18 September that it had been sold.
Sotheby Lot
SL89Contents
f. 1r 'Iodoci a Rhehe Opera Chymica [properly 'Chymiatrica': Frankfurt, 1668]. Descripsi hæc ex originali Msto Mri Iohannis quod penes me habeo. Io. Tw.'
f. 9v 'Epistolæ quædam A.C. Fabri, qui una cum consanguineo quodam Dris Io. Twysden opus hocce aggressus est et ad usq[ue] extractionem spiritus [mercur]ij Annis 1673 & 1674, fæliciter perduxit, et autographis descriptæ'. Notes on four letters, dated 3 June and 23 December 1673, 14 January and 24 June 1674.
f. 11r 'Notæ in opus Fabrianum'
Related Material
Discussed in Westfall, Never at Rest, 288-9. Westfall rather confusingly suggests that 'A.C. Faber' is a mistake for 'A.D. Faber', personal physician to Charles II and author of a book on 'aurum potabile': this seems likely, except that the physician in question is neither A.C. nor A.D. but A[lbert] O[tto] Faber, originally of Lübeck, author of De Auro potabili medicinali (1677). John Twisden was another London physician. See H1397 for Newton's copy of Rhenanus's Opera Chymiatrica: also H740, the compilation by Rhenanus and J. Grasshoff: Harmoniæ inperscrutabilis chymico-philosophicæ, sive Philosophorum antiquorum consentientium [...] decas I(-II) (1625), extensively annotated by Newton. His interest in Rhenanus is also evident in Keynes Ms. 26 and Yahuda Ms. Var. 259.
