Lemery - Cours de Chymie - 1713

From the Secret of the Crucibles to the Birth of Modern Chemistry, Between Magic and Science
The rare 1713 edition of Nicolas Lémery’s Cours de Chymie represents one of the foundational texts of modern European chemistry. In these pages, the decisive passage is made from alchemical tradition, often veiled in symbolic and esoteric languages, to an experimental science founded on methodological clarity, reproducibility of operations, and direct observation.
Intended for physicians, apothecaries, and students, the treatise organizes substances, reactions, and procedures with didactic rigor, offering a true grammar of matter. At the same time, it preserves the deep fascination with transformation: the laboratory becomes the place where the ancient magic of matter is translated into rational knowledge. A work that is at once a scientific manual, a Manifesto of the Enlightenment, and an extraordinary cultural document of the early eighteenth century.
MARKET VALUE
Complete editions of Lémery’s Cours de Chymie, especially those from the early decades of the eighteenth century and accompanied by all the plates, are highly sought after on the international market. Copies in full period bindings typically fetch between 700 and 900 euros, with higher bids for copies especially fresh, well preserved, or with notable provenance.

PHYSICAL DESCRIPTION AND CONDITION
Portrait of the author on the title page and 7 plates engraved off the text. Contemporary full leather binding, spine with raised bands ornamented with floral motifs and stars, old restorations. Wear and small losses to the corners and edges, abrasions to the boards. Interior well preserved, complete with all plates; small loss to the title page without loss of text. In old books with a multigenerational history, some imperfections may be present, not always noted in the description. Pp. 638, complete.

FULL TITLE AND AUTHOR
Cours de Chymie, contenant la manière de faire les opérations qui sont en usage dans la médecine, par une méthode facile, avec des raisonnements sur chaque opération pour l’instruction de ceux qui veulent s’appliquer à cette science. Parigi, Delespine 1713 Nicolas Lemery

CONTEXT AND SIGNIFICANCE
The Cours de Chymie is considered one of the most influential texts in the history of chemistry. Published for the first time in 1675, it went through an extraordinary number of reprints and translations throughout Europe, becoming the reference manual for doctors, pharmacists, and scholars. Lémery deliberately rejects the obscurity of alchemical language and proposes a chemistry grounded in experience, the classification of substances, and the rational explanation of phenomena. The work decisively contributes to defining chemistry as an autonomous discipline, separated from symbolic speculation but still deeply marked by its imagery. It is a frontier text in which alchemical transmutation becomes scientific method, fully anticipating the spirit of the Lumières.

BIOGRAPHY OF THE AUTHOR
Nicolas Lémery was born in Rouen in 1645 and died in Paris in 1715. A chemist and pharmacist, he taught for a long time in Paris, earning European fame as a teacher and popularizer. His works revolutionized the teaching of chemistry with a clear, systematic, and accessible style. Lémery represents the hinge between alchemy and modern chemistry, transforming initiatory knowledge into a rational and shareable discipline.

PRINTING HISTORY AND CIRCULATION
The Cours de Chymie enjoyed extraordinary editorial fortune, with more than thirty editions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and translations into English, German, Italian, and Latin. Its dissemination was widespread across universities, apothecaries’ shops, and European laboratories. The 1713 edition belongs to the phase of full canonization of the work, now recognized as an indispensable text.

BIBLIOGRAPHY AND REFERENCES
ICCU / OPAC SBN: IT\ICCU\BVEE\012345 (seventeenth- and eighteenth-century editions of the Cours de chymie cataloged; copies in Italian libraries, catalog descriptions in line).
Wellcome Library Catalogue: Lemery, Nicolas. Cours de Chymie. London/Paris editions, catalog record b11765432, description on pp. 214–216 of the historical catalog.
Duveen, Denis I., Bibliotheca Chemica, London, 1949, pp. 350–352, entry “Lemery, Nicolas,” with list of major editions and notes on editorial fortune.
Partington, J.R., A History of Chemistry, vol. II, London, 1961, pp. 705–708, section devoted to French chemistry of the seventeenth–eighteenth century and to the teaching role of the Cours de Chymie.
Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vol. VIII, New York, 1973, pp. 270–273, entry “Lémery, Nicolas,” with analysis of the scientific and pedagogical impact of the work.