eul_wid: rrg-ap
DOI 10.5281/zenodo.20335421 PDFMarkdown

What is the Management After Healing by Alchemist I

What is the Management After Healing is a brief Greek treatise attributed to an author known only as Alchemist I. The work exists only as a single fragment, and its manuscript tradition and historical context remain obscure. The title suggests a focus on regimens following treatment, placing it within the intersecting domains of late antique medicine and alchemical practice. The extant passage provides a technical recipe, advising that a medicinal compound be exposed to the open air for five days after preparation. It offers instructions for creating both a dry and a wet preparation, involving the mixing of various components—specifically described as the putrid and the non-putrid, the moist and the dry—followed by processes of grinding, storage in a vessel, and heating for a prescribed duration. This fragmentary text represents a minor yet illustrative example of the practical, recipe-oriented literature that characterized much of Greco-Roman alchemy and iatrochemistry.

ΤΙΣ Η ΜΕΤΑ ΤΗΝ ΙΩΣΙΝ ΟΙΚΟΝΟΜΙΑ

Ἐξαιθριώσαι μετὰ τὴν ἴωσιν ἡμέρας εʹ τὸ φάρμακον, κατὰ τὴν παραίνεσιν Ἴσιδος. Εἰ μὲν ξηρίον βούλει σκευάζειν, μῖξον ἀλλήλοις τὰ μόρια τοῦ συνθέματος, σεσηπός φημι καὶ τὸ ἄσηπτον, ὑγρὸν καὶ ξηρόν. Καὶ λειώσας ἐν ἡλίῳ ἢ σκιᾷ, κατάθου ἐν ἱππείᾳ. Εἰ δὲ ὑγρὸν ἐπείγῃ φάρμακον ἐκτελεῖν, μίξας ἄμφω τὰ ὕδατα, καὶ ἀσφαλισάμενος ἐν τοῖς ἄγγεσιν, ἀπόδος τῇ τῶν βολβίτων πυρίᾳ τρεῖς ἢ πέντε μόνον ἡμέρας, καὶ λειοτριβήσας, ἔχε τέλειον τὸ ξηρίον.