ULSTAD, Philipp.

Philipp Ulstad was a Nuremberg nobleman who taught medicine at the Academy in Fribourg in the early sixteenth century. He is primarily known to posterity for his Coelum philosophorum, an extremely popular and frequently reprinted work which served ‘as a standard authority on the preparation and use of distillates for nearly a century’ (DSB). Its popularity and influence is partly to be attributed to the clarity of Ulstad’s exposition of distillatory processes and to the numerous and informative woodcut illustrations. “Despite his use of alchemical terminology, Ulstad clearly dissociated himself from the enigmatic aspects of the alchemical tradition in offering his concise and rational account of the preparation of distilled remedies. […] The lucidity of his technical directions was a major reason for the influence exerted by Ulstad. His discussion of apparatus and manipulative procedures afforded the sixteenth-century investigator an accurate summary of the best distilling theory then available.” (DSB)

Throughout his book, Ulstad made great use of the four authors he names in the letter of dedication: Albertus Magnus, Ramon Lull, Arnald of Villanova, and John of Rupescissa. Ulstad wanted to present his readers – which would have included apothecaries, surgeons, and aspiring alchemists – with ideas and techniques which, culled from the medieval alchemical tradition, could serve a practical or scientific use. “The first nine chapters of the book are devoted to a discussion of the manipulative techniques used [for the preparation of the Quintessence]. These techniques are illustrated by means of woodcuts referred to in the text. Then follow twenty-eight separate recipes for the preparation of the Quintessence or aurum potabile from a wide variety of substances including gold, spices, fruits, flowers, precious stones, antimony, honey’ (Atkinson and Hughes, 105). Ulstad also outlines fourteen methods for the preparation of aqua vitae as a cure for several ailments.

The latter part of the book (beginning on p. 397) is extensively annotated in a contemporary hand. The mnemonic and recapitulatory nature of the annotations suggests that the text served as handbook or vade mecum to a contemporary student alchemist. Important passages are frequently underlined or marked by a symbol (in one case by the imperative ‘lege’ (p.433)) to facilitate the future retrieval of information, while the Latin marginal annotations tend to repeat or condense the text itself.