Reading the Natural World: 'Natural Magic'
Read More![Della Porta’s hugely popular book covered twenty aspects of natural magic, including distillation. Copper stills such as this one were used to extract the oils of herbs and flowers. For his own ‘waters’, Smith distilled aqua vitae (concentrated ethanol) with celandine, roses and eyebright from his own garden. He was eager to share his concoctions with his friends. When William Cecil’s daughter was in danger of miscarrying, Smith sent her a course of treatment, along with a reassuring letter for her mother.<br>
<i>‘Madame I sent yesterday of my waters to my Lord for my Lady of Oxford… There is nothing in it but such as is daily eaten and drunken, no purgation, no spice, but it hath such virtue that next to God I owe my health to it and so many hath given me thanks and do repeat it a singular thing.’</i> (Smith in a letter to Lady Burghley, 7th March 1574 [B.M. Lansdowne S.19/50])
<br><br>
<b>Author:</b> Giambattista della Porta<br>
<b>Title:</b><i> Magiae naturalis </i> [Natural magic] (Frankfurt, 1597) <br>
<b>Shelfmark:</b> H.20.32 <a href="http://idiscover.lib.cam.ac.uk/permalink/f/1nnjft8/44CAM_ALMA21392239250003606"> (catalogue record)</a>](https://photos.smugmug.com/Exhibitions/ThomasSmith/Natural-Magic/i-sD3PDf9/0/b6c82b88/M/_MG_4826-7-M.jpg)
Della Porta’s hugely popular book covered twenty aspects of natural magic, including distillation. Copper stills such as this one were used to extract the oils of herbs and flowers. For his own ‘waters’, Smith distilled aqua vitae (concentrated ethanol) with celandine, roses and eyebright from his own garden. He was eager to share his concoctions with his friends. When William Cecil’s daughter was in danger of miscarrying, Smith sent her a course of treatment, along with a reassuring letter for her mother.
‘Madame I sent yesterday of my waters to my Lord for my Lady of Oxford… There is nothing in it but such as is daily eaten and drunken, no purgation, no spice, but it hath such virtue that next to God I owe my health to it and so many hath given me thanks and do repeat it a singular thing.’ (Smith in a letter to Lady Burghley, 7th March 1574 [B.M. Lansdowne S.19/50])
Author: Giambattista della Porta
Title: Magiae naturalis [Natural magic] (Frankfurt, 1597)
Shelfmark: H.20.32 (catalogue record)
![Agricola was a sixteenth-century German humanist and natural philosopher. He set out to establish mining and mineralogy as topics worthy of humanist scholarship. In De re metallica he drew on classical texts, particularly Pliny the Elder’s Natural history, and replaced German mining terms with Greek and Latin words. The resulting text was both practical and scholarly, and remained the definitive work on mining until the Industrial Revolution. In this illustration, aqua valens (nitric acid) is distilled and used to separate gold from silver. William Medley, the alchemist who defrauded Smith, claimed that he could draw copper from iron by using the same technique. That Smith mainly annotated those passages that relate to the separation of metals using acids betrays of his obsession with this idea.
<br><br>
<b>Author:</b> Agricola<br>
<b>Title:</b><i> De re metallica </i> [On the nature of metals] (Basel, 1561)
<br>
<b>Shelfmark:</b> D.1.3 <a href="http://idiscover.lib.cam.ac.uk/permalink/f/1nnjft8/44CAM_ALMA21397911990003606"> (catalogue record)</a>](https://photos.smugmug.com/Exhibitions/ThomasSmith/Natural-Magic/i-QLcQfdZ/0/bc033411/Ti/_MG_4821-6-Ti.jpg)
![<b>Author:</b> Agricola<br>
<b>Title:</b><i> De re metallica </i> [On the nature of metals] (Basel, 1561)
<br>
<b>Shelfmark:</b> D.1.3 <a href="http://idiscover.lib.cam.ac.uk/permalink/f/1nnjft8/44CAM_ALMA21397911990003606"> (catalogue record)</a>](https://photos.smugmug.com/Exhibitions/ThomasSmith/Natural-Magic/i-7mjT4j5/0/81355423/Ti/_MG_4820-5-Ti.jpg)
![<b>Author:</b> Agricola<br>
<b>Title:</b><i> De re metallica </i> [On the nature of metals] (Basel, 1561)
<br>
<b>Shelfmark:</b> D.1.3 <a href="http://idiscover.lib.cam.ac.uk/permalink/f/1nnjft8/44CAM_ALMA21397911990003606"> (catalogue record)</a>](https://photos.smugmug.com/Exhibitions/ThomasSmith/Natural-Magic/i-NQv9Dcj/0/1f368b62/Ti/_MG_4819-4-Ti.jpg)
![Della Porta’s hugely popular book covered twenty aspects of natural magic, including distillation. Copper stills such as this one were used to extract the oils of herbs and flowers. For his own ‘waters’, Smith distilled aqua vitae (concentrated ethanol) with celandine, roses and eyebright from his own garden. He was eager to share his concoctions with his friends. When William Cecil’s daughter was in danger of miscarrying, Smith sent her a course of treatment, along with a reassuring letter for her mother.<br>
<i>‘Madame I sent yesterday of my waters to my Lord for my Lady of Oxford… There is nothing in it but such as is daily eaten and drunken, no purgation, no spice, but it hath such virtue that next to God I owe my health to it and so many hath given me thanks and do repeat it a singular thing.’</i> (Smith in a letter to Lady Burghley, 7th March 1574 [B.M. Lansdowne S.19/50])
<br><br>
<b>Author:</b> Giambattista della Porta<br>
<b>Title:</b><i> Magiae naturalis </i> [Natural magic] (Frankfurt, 1597) <br>
<b>Shelfmark:</b> H.20.32 <a href="http://idiscover.lib.cam.ac.uk/permalink/f/1nnjft8/44CAM_ALMA21392239250003606"> (catalogue record)</a>](https://photos.smugmug.com/Exhibitions/ThomasSmith/Natural-Magic/i-sD3PDf9/0/b6c82b88/Ti/_MG_4826-7-Ti.jpg)
![<b>Author:</b> Giambattista della Porta<br>
<b>Title:</b><i> Magiae naturalis </i> [Natural magic] (Frankfurt, 1597) <br>
<b>Shelfmark:</b> H.20.32 <a href="http://idiscover.lib.cam.ac.uk/permalink/f/1nnjft8/44CAM_ALMA21392239250003606"> (catalogue record)</a>](https://photos.smugmug.com/Exhibitions/ThomasSmith/Natural-Magic/i-9qrK6B7/0/0143802c/Ti/_MG_4824-5-Ti.jpg)
![<b>Author:</b> Giambattista della Porta<br>
<b>Title:</b><i> Magiae naturalis </i> [Natural magic] (Frankfurt, 1597) <br>
<b>Shelfmark:</b> H.20.32 <a href="http://idiscover.lib.cam.ac.uk/permalink/f/1nnjft8/44CAM_ALMA21392239250003606"> (catalogue record)</a>](https://photos.smugmug.com/Exhibitions/ThomasSmith/Natural-Magic/i-JTj5RkT/0/d0254a0d/Ti/_MG_4825-6-Ti.jpg)
![Five-word 2D Latin palindrome, also part of the Rotas-Sator square in a 17th century hand above armorial bookplate of Queens' College: 'Sator arepo tenet opera rotas'
<br><br>
<b>Author:</b> Giambattista della Porta<br>
<b>Title:</b><i> Magiae naturalis </i> [Natural magic] (Frankfurt, 1597) <br>
<b>Shelfmark:</b> H.20.32 <a href="http://idiscover.lib.cam.ac.uk/permalink/f/1nnjft8/44CAM_ALMA21392239250003606"> (catalogue record)</a>](https://photos.smugmug.com/Exhibitions/ThomasSmith/Natural-Magic/i-L96zMP7/0/eace1988/Ti/_MG_4822-3-Ti.jpg)