HOW AND BY what method could this pestilence be contracted? Some assert that like dust it accompanies the wind, lodging where it pleases as do worms in fruit. This I think unlikely. Others point to contagious vapors drifting north from Egypt, which sounds plausible. I suspect vulnerability occurs during effervescence when the blood decays after furious attempts to expel turbid, foaming redundancies. Also, children whose organs lack development readily succumb to epidemics and the reason is clear: Inadequate or excitable blood distorts the veins of adolescent bodies. Yet if asked, I could not answer which illnesses be justified. Who among us would judge the hind part of God?
REGARDING PROPHYLAXIS, THE air being swollen with effluvia should be broken apart. Violent noises usually are helpful, such as the explosions of cannon, ringing of church bells, and snarling dogs. Sulphuric bonfires might be appropriate to correct the humidity by restoring an equivalent balance to consonance, because this scourge very possibly emanates from atmospheric distemper. Interior and exterior surfaces must be sprinkled with vinegar in order to weaken virulent atoms. Spiders should be encouraged to devise complex webs at every corner, subduing evil. Fresh baked loaves of bread displayed on a stick absorb toxic influences. Curdled milk on a window-sill or outside the door is a sovereign panacea. Bezoar and hyacinth-stone show equally admirable properties. I think the breath of oxen is salubrious after midnight so these animals ought to be tethered inside the dwelling, but should not be eaten since turgid meat proves dangerous. Suckling pig is unhealthful, as is the flesh of waterbirds. Any food which is cold, moist or slippery could be harmful. Bathing might prove fatal. Intercourse promotes diarrhoea, which is debilitating and conducive to melancholic apathy. Heirlooms made of gold or silver assuage the troubled heart, hence these may be regarded as prophylactic by untutored or fatuous doctors. Nonsense! Many times have I seen the beard and cloak while the analeptic I doubt. Yet what am I if my experience stands useless? Very often I have no idea what to prescribe. Perhaps we are governed by atomi within the seed.
CONCERNING TREATMENT, A poultice of figs and boiled onions mixed and simmered and mixed with fresh butter ripens styptic buboes. Leeches assist. Theriaca of snake may be good, or the rectum of a predatory bird macerated in chyle. That suppurating boils be cauterized with rods is preposterous, resulting in little except discomfort, albeit Guy de Chauliac reports twelve lives lengthened. At times I think most treatment less efficacious than eating night-owl eggs or pissing through a bronze ring. I consider it wise foolishness. Infirmities seem our fortune. These visitations that beleaguer us—I suspect they descend from above and our eyes open to a pitiless world where mirage begins.
BLACK PESTE HAS leapt the Rhine. Theology falters, violence ensues. The muzzle of a black rat scurrying through darkness darkens with hate while we feed on terriculaments. Fright writ like letters on a map where topographers label some territory Unknown. And each victim, calling his anguish unjustified, begs to be excused. Earth rest lightly on the unfortunate.
OUTSIDE THE BRUGES Gate at twilight this vagabond, his paunch puffed tight like a woman full of triplets, groaning piteous, dropsic from leaking buboes, all corrupt and red foamy lungs, swelling myrach with a blue flame flickering out of his mouth, gibbering, whining past bloody teeth, a stink like swine gall with a goose honking at his feet—none knew why. Blessed I am that I have yet to meet an imitation of Christ or a disciple selling such restrictive faith. I suspect the true Alchymist might be providence, our security and light.
WHAT BENEFIT TO congelation or sublimation while the visage turns mottled? What purpose distillation and cupellation? In a mirror I see not myself but Ourobouros.
OLA! THUS ACCOSTED by an unctuous Spaniard stroking a tidy mustache, velour cap overlaid in gold with a yellow feather, velvet upperstocks, pantafels and pynsons, with a satin cape hanging from one shoulder and a purse slung about his neck, sporting a gilt rapier and the luminous gaze of a sewer rat who swore he could produce the Infant—which secret he might barter for a trifle since his good wife had but recently died and he lacked funds to dig her grave. One drachm I displayed, bidding him exchange it for tickets to paradise. We are close, he said, very close to a beginning.
Rumors of a wandering magus conceived in heresy and mistrust that would resurrect us . . .
HOW OFTEN WE HEAR THAT NATURAL species may not be transmuted because one into another means spurious descendants. Hence, adaptation of gold by lead must constitute gross inadequacy—the superior species denied through admixture—which results not in corrupt gold but, according to their harmonic virtues, gold of a middle synthesis. Now this objection we acknowledge, although it appears to contravene both science and the Adept. Yet here is a misunderstanding born, since we do not endeavor to transmute species,
