Catalogue Entry: ALCH00082

Three related sets of notes (late 1680s-90s).

Author: Isaac Newton

Metadata: Not yet dated, in English , c. 5,300 words, 8 pp. badly discoloured and barely legible.

Source: NMAHRB Ms. 1032 B, Dibner Library, Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C., USA

[Normalized Text (at Chymistry of Isaac Newton)]

Custodial History

Bought at the Sotheby sale by Maggs Brothers for £12.10s. Offered on approval first to Keynes, who returned it on 19 August 1936, then to Yahuda (for the sale price plus 20%), who returned it on 8 September 1936. At some point acquired by Bern Dibner, who donated it to the Smithsonian. Previously Burndy Ms. 15.

Sotheby Lot

SL85

Contents

Entitled 'The Regimen' (7 pp.), 'The Regimen', (8 pp.) and 'Of y^e Regimen' (2 pp., incomplete). Describe a sequence of (al)chemical operations largely drawn from the works of 'Philalethes', though other authors including Pontanus, Maier and Roger Bacon are cited, especially in the second set of notes. On the loose scrap (which is not mentioned in the Sotheby catalogue, though the manuscript is described as 18 pp. and the catalogue does not normally count blank pages), various alchemical references, with mention of John Day and of Roger Bacon's Elementorum and Michael Maier's Arcana arcanissima, written over and on the reverse of a receipt dated 11 September 1689.

Related Material

See Dobbs, 'Newton Manuscripts at the Smithsonian', 106-7 and 'Newton's Copy of "Secrets Reveal'd"', 159.