Nicolas Fatio de Duillier, Alchemical Collaborator

This chapter discusses Newton's collaborative chymical project with Nicolas Fatio de Duillier in 1693. By examining Fatio's hitherto unstudied letter to Newton from the summer of 1693 in conjunction with Newton's manuscript “Three Mysterious Fires”, the chapter shows that the latter text represents the fruit of an elaborate set of procedures devised by Newton in conjunction with Fatio. These processes were related to another set of operations from Newton that Fatio recapitulates in the aforementioned 1693 letter. The procedures that Fatio quotes from Newton provide an important key for understanding both Keynes 58 and the laboratory notebooks. In a word, they are simplified procedures for making such important desiderata as the caduceus of Mercury and the scythe of Saturn, Decknamen that arise in the records of Newton's experimentation and reading notes.