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"T. Livius, Burattinus, and Michael Schatta, in their letters to Kircher, affirm that they found many lamps in the subterranean caves of old Memphis. Pausanias speaks of the golden lamp in the temple of Minerva at Athens, which he says was the workmanship of Callimachus, and burnt a whole year. Plutarch affirms that he saw [...]

"Among the many well-known personages who firmly believed and strenuously asserted that such sepulchral lamps burned for several hundreds of years, and would have continued to burn maybe forever, had they not been extinguished, or the vessels broken by some accident, we may reckon the following names: Clemens Alexandrinus, Hermolaus Barbarus, Appian, Burattinus, Citesius, Coelius, [...]

"Among the ridiculed claims of alchemy is that of the perpetual lamps. If we tell the reader that we have seen such, we may be asked - in case that the sincerity of our personal belief is not questioned - how we can tell that the lamps we have observed are perpetual, as the period [...]

"But what matters if they do deny? Can they prevent phenomena taking place in the four corners of the world, if their skepticism were a thousand times more bitter? Fakirs will still be buried and resuscitated, gratifying the curiosity of European travelers; and lamas and Hindu ascetics will wound, mutilate, and even disembowel themselves, and [...]