Editing Georgius Agricola (section)

===Town physician and pharmacist===
[[Image:Agricola1.jpg|thumb|right|A water mill used for raising ore]]
[[File:Fire-setting.jpg|thumb|Fire-setting underground]]

He returned to Zwickau in 1527 and to Chemnitz in autumn of the same year, where he married Anna Meyner, a widow from Schneeberg. Upon his search for employment as town physician and pharmacist in the [[Ore Mountains]], preferably a place, where he could satisfy his ardent longings for the studies on mining, he settled in the suitable little town [[Jáchymov|Joachimsthal]] in the ''Bohemian Erzgebirge'', where in 1516 significant silver ore deposits were found.<ref name=FZC/> The 15,000 inhabitants made Joachimsthal a busy, booming centre of mining and smelting works with hundreds of shafts for Agricola to investigate.

His primary post proved to be not very demanding and he lent all his spare time to his studies. Beginning in 1528 he immersed himself in comparisons and tests on what had been written about mineralogy and mining and his own observations of the local materials and the methods of their treatment.<ref>{{cite web |url=https://www.glauchau.de/glauchau/content/23/20140506180140.asp |title=Denkmal Georgius Agricola |publisher= Glauchau de | access-date= April 5, 2019 }}</ref> He constructed a logical system of the local conditions, rocks and sediments, the minerals and ores, explained the various terms of general and specific local territorial features. He combined this discourse on all natural aspects with a treatise on the actual mining, the methods and processes, local extraction variants, the differences and oddities he had learnt from the miners. For the first time, he tackled questions on the formation of ores and minerals, attempted to bring the underlying mechanisms to light and introduce his conclusions in a systematic framework. He laid out the whole process in a scholarly dialogue and published it under the title ''Bermannus, sive de re metallica dialogus'', (Bermannus, or a dialogue on metallurgy) in 1530. The work was highly praised by [[Desiderius Erasmus|Erasmus]] for the attempt to put the knowledge, won by practical inquiry into order and further investigate in reduced form. Agricola, in his capacity of physician, also suggested, that minerals and their effects on and relationship to human medicine should be a future subject of investigation.<ref name="FZC" /><ref>{{cite web|url=https://www.tms.org/pubs/books/pdfs/09-1002-e/09-1002-0.pdf |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20150807040220/http://www.tms.org/pubs/books/pdfs/09-1002-e/09-1002-0.pdf |archive-date=2015-08-07 |url-status=live |title= The Pirotechnica of Vannoccio Biringuccio - Translated from the Italian with an introduction and notes by Cyril Stanley Smith and Martha Teach Gnudi, p. 45 | publisher = The American Institute of Mining and Metallurgical Engineers  |author=Cyril Stanley Smith, Martha Teach Gnudi |access-date= April 4, 2019  }}</ref><ref>{{cite news |url=https://www.zeit.de/1994/12/der-mann-der-aufschrieb-wie-das-silber-aus-dem-berg-kommt |title=Der Mann, der aufschrieb, wie das Silber aus dem Berg kommt |newspaper=Die Zeit |publisher= DIE ZEIT Archiv | date=March 18, 1994 | access-date= April 5, 2019 }}</ref>

In 1531 [[Christian Egenolff]] in [[Frankfurt]] published his German book named ''Rechter Gebrauch d'Alchimei, mitt vil bissher verborgenen, nutzbaren unnd lustigen Künsten, nit allein den fürwitzigen Alchimismisten, sonder allen kunstbaren Werckleutten, in und ausserhalb Feurs. Auch sunst aller menglichen inn vil wege zugebrauchen''<ref>{{Cite web |title=Alchemical Imagery - illustrated title Agricola |url=https://alchemywebsite.com/Emblems_Title_Agricola_Rechter.html |access-date=2023-12-24 |website=alchemywebsite.com}}</ref> (''The Proper Use of Alchemy'') which argued that true "alchemy" should not attempt transmutation of metals to gold or synthesizing the [[philosopher's stone]] but rather study and develop the industrial methods of skilled craftsmen.<ref>{{Cite journal |last=Niermeier-Dohoney |first=Justin |date=December 2022 |title="Rusticall chymistry": Alchemy, saltpeter projects, and experimental fertilizers in seventeenth-century English agriculture |journal=History of Science |volume=60 |issue=4 |pages=546–574 |doi=10.1177/00732753211033159 |issn=0073-2753 |pmc=9703379 |pmid=34533386}}</ref>