Apothecary Manuscript - Alchemy - Lot 347

Apothecary Manuscript - Alchemy RECUEIL POTIONS de PHARMACIE - SORCELLERIE Manuscript entitled "Recueil contenant plusieurs secrets" by M. ... (name deleted). This work offers a wide range of potions and remedies for use in medicine, surgery and aesthetics. Also included at the beginning of the volume are curious recipes and elixirs more closely related to witchcraft than medicine, but also on the virtues of precious stones (alchemy): "The diamond is admirable against enemies, puts ferocious and poisonous beasts to flight, brings disputes and lawsuits to an end, and is very good against poisons and folets - it must be worn on the left side...". Some succulent extracts concerning witchcraft: "Pour les yeux - qui portera les pieds de l'alouette sur soi ne sera jamais persécuté au contraire sera toujours victorieux et les ennemis le craindre Les vertus du chat huant si l'on met son coeur avec son pied droit sur une personne endormie, elle dira aussy tost ce qu'elle aura fait et répondra aux demandes qu'on luy. What's more, if you put it under the armpit, dogs won't be able to bark at it... The virtues of the raven... If you cook the eggs and put them back in the nest where you took them, the crow will go to an island... And brings a stone with which, touching the eggs, he returns them to the same state they were in before, which is quite surprising... If you put this stone in a ring, with a laurel leaf, and then touch someone who is chained, or the lock of a closed door, then soon the chains will break". "The virtues of the turtle-dove. If one carries the heart of this bird in a wolf skin, it will extinguish all the fires of concupiscence and amorous desires, and if one rubs its blood mixed with water in which a mole has been boiled, all the black hairs will fall out and the horse hairs will become white...". Of the weasel: if someone eats its still-beating heart, it will foretell the future". "If you attach a wolf's right eye to the sleeve of your right hand, neither men nor dogs nor any other animal will be able to harm it or do it any harm.... To make a woman love you, take goat droppings... Snake skin applied to the hip of a woman in labor makes her give birth promptly". "To make a girl or woman say all she knows in her sleep, take the heart of a pigeon with the head of a frog.... To make a woman conceive, powder deer horn and mester it with cow dung..." and other passages to discover! The book also includes a chapter on the ingredients needed to make "eau de Monsieur Dalibour" (the famous elixir "eau de Dalibour" invented in 1700 by the famous surgeon, with antiseptic properties). Also available: "Recette de l'herbe de Constantinople, autrement appelé Pétun" (mentioned later). An important section at the end of the volume concerns aesthetics and beauty. The table of contents includes a price list of drugs taken from M. du Molard, apothecary in Lunéville (possibly the original provenance of the work and its owner). In folio, approx. 420 pages, in large, legible ink. Contemporary brown calf, spine ribbed and ornamented, headpieces torn off, jaws split, wear rubbing, corners bumped, edges red, traces of an old metal clasp missing.