Under the pseudonym of Alessio Piemontese, the polygrapher Girolamo Ruscelli (Viterbo 1518?), a prolific intellectual with multiple interests, published the alchemical and technological cookbook which met with enormous success and was reprinted and translated into numerous languages for over two centuries. In the letter to the readers responsible for the Secrets, the author presents himself as an over eighty-year-old scholar who, devoured by the remorse of having indirectly caused the death of a man suffering from stone disease, has decided to reveal the secrets of his science. Caillet 177, Vicaire 12-13, Westbury 8, Graesse 168.