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Fabre, Pierre Jean (ca. 1590-1650)

French alchemist, a native of Castelnaudary in Languedoc. Fabre was a doctor of medicine and was renowned in his own time as a scholar of chemistry, a subject on which he compiled several treatises. Because he practiced in Montepellier, he has been confused with a painter named Fabre who was born in Montepellier and gave his name to the Musée Fabre in that town.

There is no evidence that Pierre Jean Fabre had any practical success in the field of alchemy, but he wrote numerous works dealing with that topic.

Of these the most important are Alchimista Christianus and Hercules Piochymicus, both published at Toulouse, the first in 1632. In the latter he maintains that the mythological "labors of Hercules" are allegories, embodying the arcana of hermetic philosophy. The philosophers' stone, he declares complacently, may be found in all compounded circumstances and is formed of salt, mercury, and sulphur.