THE FRAUDULENT PRACTITIONERS
They conceive mischief, and bring forth vanity, and their belly prepareth deceit. (OldT:Job 15:35)
A Very Elaborate Scheme
Duke Cosimo I was the victim of a swindle carefully prepared by a false
alchemist who called himself Daniel von Siebenburgen.
This Daniel
von Siebenburgen went to work on a long view, and himself sunk four thousand
ducats in his fraudulent enterprise. Out of the four thousand ducats he
had prepared a powder which nobody could easily recognize as gold and which
he called the Usufur powder.
With this he began the first preparatory part of his fraud. He had so to
introduce and popularize the powder that every apothecary knew about it and
regarded it as well-known and not excessively dear medicament.
To this end Daniel von Siebenburgen travelled through the Italian towns and
sold Usufur with other preparations to the pharmacists, as a medicament.
Then he set up as a physician, and made his patients themselves fetch Usufur
from the pharmacists for him to incorporate in the medicines he prepared for
them. In this way he got his gold back and at the same time quietly pushed
his powder into notice.
In 1555, when he felt the time was ripe, Daniel went to Florence and secured
an audience from Duke Cosimo. The alchemist showed plenty of self-assurance.
He said he could offer a recipe for making gold that contained only a few
simple chemicals and required no long period or difficult manipulations for
production. The duke could himself have the materials brought from any
apothecary in the city. The duke saw on the list a Usufur powder that was
unfamiliar to him. But he found that the apothecaries all knew it. The
first test went smoothly and with perfect success. The metal refiners
declared the product to be pure gold. The duke himself made another test
privily for his own satisfaction, with no worse result. No wonder Duke
Cosimo hasten to purchase the recipe from the alchemist. A formal agreement
was drawn up under which Daniel von Seibenburgen bound himself to make the
new process known to no other person, and in return was to receive from the
duke an indemnity of twenty thousand ducats.
So Daniel von Siebenburgen was relieved for the time from all anxiety as to
his means of subsistence. But, as the duke could understand, the learned
Daniel was a very busy man. Many people must need his scientific counsel in
these matters. So it was not surprising that the great alchemist was soon
summoned urgently to France for a consultation.
The Duke of Florence had no fear for his gold production. Without the
alchemist having anything to do with the work, the duke had himself sent
again and again to the apothecaries for the materials for the gold mixture,
including the Usufur powder, and he had thus already made gold to the value
of a couple of thousand ducats. But, quite apart from that, the duke had a
great regard for the learned Daniel von Siebenburgen, and did not want to
lose him from his court at Florence. So Daniel had to promise the duke that
he would soon return. On the day of his departure a ducal barge conveyed
him across the sea.
But Daniel did not return to Florence. Instead there came an impudent letter
for the duke in which the alchemist mentioned the limited world stocks of
Usufur and intimated that he was the only manufacturer of it.
[From The Goldmakers, by K. K. Doberer; pages 109 to 110.]
Other swindlers repeated Daniel von Siebenburgen's trick on a smaller scale.
Some would sell an already well-known medication mixed with gold to the
city's apothecaries. One man used gold mixed with charcoal in his
experiment. Another man's recipe called for a special spice which was sold
to the victim by an accomplice.
Some frauds were alloys of gold and some other metal, or bronze- and
brass-like alloys. Sometimes the swindler would forge a nail with one half
solid gold and the other half iron. Then they would paint the gold half
black and then dip it in a liquid that would remove the paint. To the
spectator, it would appear as if the nail was half transmuted into gold.
If the nail was taken to a refiner for testing, the refiner would verify
that the gold half was truly gold and the other half was definitely iron.