Michael Maier a jeho spis De medicina regia (1609)

Abstract

Michael Maier (1569, Kiel – 1622, Magdeburg), a German physician and alchemist, spent his life travelling, first to study at several universities, then in search of aristocratic supporters. He received a doctoral title in medicine in Basel. Maier wrote a number of works, the best known being his book of emblems, the Atalanta fugiens (1618). His attack on fraudulent alchemists, Examen Fucorum Pseudo-chymicorum (1617), was analysed recently. De medicina regia, his early work, was recently discovered in the Royal Library in Copenhagen, which holds what seems to be the book’s only surviving copy. This book was printed 1609 in Prague, where Maier stayed for a short time between 1608 and 1610, joined the court of Emperor Rudolf II, and was elevated to the rank of Count palatine. De medicina, chemical aspects of which are the subject of this paper, turns out to be important also because its first part describes Maier’s life. It helped fill certain gaps in his previously rather incomplete biography. Although Maier claimed that his aim was to prepare a universal medicine, the main part of the work deals with alchemy. Maier claims that his efforts to produce a panacea were successful, but the recipe is not found in the book. Instead, he deals with transmutational alchemy, discusses various theories of matter, and describes laboratory practices. Especially in this field, Maier draws extensively on Pseudogeber’s Late Medieval Summa perfectionis magisterii. This attests to the importance of this treatise in Early Modern alchemy. Some recipes described in the De medicina are rather complicated, but all focus on achieving transmutation. References to Maier’s universal medicine are limited to several case reports.