Homunculas
An artificial man supposed to have been made by the alchemists, and especially by Paracelsus. To manufacture one, he states that the needful spagyric substances should be taken and shut up in a glass phial, and afterwards be placed to digest in horse-dung for the space of forty days. At the end of this time, there will be something which will begin to move and live in the bottle. This something is a man, but a man who has no body and is transparent. Nevertheless, he exists, and nothing remains but to bring him up which is not more difficult to do than to make him. You may accomplish it by daily feeding him during forty weeks, and without extricating him from his dung-hill-with the arcanum of human blood. At the end of this time you shall have a veritable living child, having every member as well-proportioned as any infant born of a woman. He will only be much smaller than an ordinary child, and his physical education will require more care and attention.