Alchemy - GLASER (Christophe). A treatise on Chemistry... Lot 28

Alchemy - GLASER (Christophe). A treatise on Chemistry teaching by a brief and easy method all its most necessary preparations. Paris, Chez l'auteur, 1663. Small in-8 of [8] ff.-[1] bl. f.-378 pp. Engraved title and 2 double-page engraved plates showing the author's stills and utensils. With a small printed leaf placed before p.1 "Explanation de quelques caracteres usitez dans la Pharmacie". Marbled calf, spine ribbed and decorated (contemporary binding). Binding worn and restored. Ex-libris E Bibliotheca Doctoris Altholii. First edition of the treatise by the Swiss apothecary and chemist Ch. Glaser (1629-1672), inventor of silver nitrate and renowned for his subtle and devastating poisons which implicated him in the Brinvilliers affair. Caillet attributes the authorship of this work to Moyse CHARAS: "colleague of Glaser, in his capacity of Apothecary artist of the King in his Royal Garden of Plants. In the first page of the preface of his Thériaque d'Andromachus (Paris, 1668, in-12). Charas says verbatim, speaking of Glaser's Traité de la Cbymie: "... I would rather publish it under the name of Christophle Glaser, than to show my own name in it.... "...] Ch. Glaser, as well as his associate Ste-Croix, perished while distilling their drugs, and it was then that justice having penetrated into their murky dispensary, certain documents were discovered which led to the arrest of Brinvilliers and his accomplices and were the starting point of the Poisons affair. It is curious to see what conception the poisoner Glaser had of chemistry." "In the original edition: Oil and Volatile Salt of Human Skulls (p. 357). Distillation of the flesh of vipers. Fulminating gold (p. 81)" Caillet (2201). (Dorbon 1873.)