Catalogue Entry: ALCH00126

'Preparatio mercurii ad lapidem per regulam et lunam, ex MSS. Phil[oponi] Phi[lalethis] Americani'

Author: Isaac Newton

Metadata: before 1678, in Latin with some English , c. 1,000 words, 6 pp. + 2 pp. blank

Source: Location Unknown

Custodial History

Bought at the 1936 Sotheby sale by Emmanuel Fabius for £10. Offered as Lot 505 at the New York Sotheby sale of 3 December 2004 for an estimated $80,000-$100,000 but failed to sell.

Sotheby Lot

SL75

Contents

Notes on and excerpts from various works of 'Philoponus Philalethes', one of the pseudonyms of the American alchemist George Starkey, though Newton was almost certainly unaware of the author's true identity.

Notes

The text is also extant in another version (not in Newton's hand) in Ferguson Ms. 85 at Glasgow University and is printed in the anonymous Enarratio methodum trium Gebri medicinarum (London, 1678: H554). An English translation appears on pp. 183-8 of Ripley Reviv'd (also London, 1678: H1407) by 'Eirenæus Philalethes', another pseudonym of Starkey. Since Newton states in his title that his copy was taken from a manuscript source, it presumably predates these publications, both of which Newton subsequently acquired copies of.