Catalogue Entry: ALCH00131

'A Key to Snyders'

Author: Isaac Newton

Source: Location Unknown

Custodial History

SL103 was bought at the 1936 Sotheby sale by Emmanuel Fabius for £6. This portion was sold as Lot 503 at the New York Sotheby sale of 3 December 2004 to an unknown buyer for $36,000. It was then offered by Christie's of London as Lot 88 on 13 December 2006 for an estimated £25,000-£35,000, but failed to sell. The remainder of SL 103 was Lot 502 in the 2004 Sotheby sale.

Sotheby Lot

Part of SL103

Contents

Consists primarily of excerpts from Johann de Monte Snyders' Commentatio de pharmaco catholico, which was published in Reconditiorum ac reclusiorum opulentiæ sapientiæque numinis mundi magni (Amsterdam, 1666). Supplementary notes are taken from the anonymous 'Instructio patris ad filium de arbore solari' from volume 6 of Lazarus Zetzner's Theatrum chemicum (Strasbourg, 1659-61) and other unidentified sources.

Newton took a keen interest in the now obscure and possibly fictitious figure of Snyders. Cf. Keynes Ms. 58 and the Mss. in the Cushing/Whitney Medical Library, Yale University, and the Rare Book and Manuscript Library, Columbia University.

© 2024 The Newton Project

Professor Rob Iliffe
Director, AHRC Newton Papers Project

Scott Mandelbrote,
Fellow & Perne librarian, Peterhouse, Cambridge

Faculty of History, George Street, Oxford, OX1 2RL - newtonproject@history.ox.ac.uk

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