Remarks upon alchemy and the alchemists, indicating a method of discovering the true nature of Hermetic philosophy : and showing that the search after the philosopher's stone had not for its object the discovery of an agent for the transmutation of metals.
An 1865 New York treatise on alchemy by Ethan Allan Hitchcock, a scholarly argument aimed at readers of Hermetic philosophy, with this frontispiece-style plate showing an emblem. The picture is a woodcut-style heraldic shield with a tree, a staff topped by an open book, a bell, and a fish on a dish, under a banner reading VIA VERITAS VITA. A designer might take its compact symbolic arrangement inside a shield shape as a model for emblem or crest layouts.
