ATDTDA (3): Everybody Must Get Anti-Stoned (78-79)
Keith
keithsz at mac.com
Sat Mar 3 01:55:03 CST 2007
Van Helmont went on to attempt to develop empirical cures for the stone.
Though he achieved disappointing results, he concluded from his
lifetime of
experiments that urine contains a stone-preventive. He also claimed
there
was a _ludus Paracelsi_, a "stony-antistone," involving the liquor
alkahest,
a stone so mysterious that he said, for reasons known only to God
alone it
must remain among the secrets which God alone can reveal only to the few
elect. But he does tell us where to find the material for the
_ludus_, on
the shores of the river Schelde where bricks are fired. The material
is to
be transmuted into a volatile salt, then into an oily salt, with a
taste like
urine. Van Helmont says it should be taken daily, with perhaps white
wine, as
a prophylactic against stone.
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