Frontispiece of the Collection of the Most Curious and Rare Secrets ,
of Joseph du Chesne, Sieur de la Violette and Baron de Morence (1544-1609),
physician to King Henry IV of France, where the Treaty of Metallic Medicine appears.

TREATY ON METALLIC MEDICINE

Joseph du Chesne (Quercenatus)

1641
(posthumous edition)


THE PRINTER TO THE READER.

The esteem that all of Europe has made of the late Monsieur de la Violette & that his writings will make immortal so much the sciences will have credit, made me absolutely believe that what came from his hand could not be sought with too much care, nor received without general approval. Heaven does not perform miracles every day, nor does the nature of those great geniuses to whom it declares its secrets. Here is what is most rare, and I can say without vanity that nothing can be added to these collections except their second part. I promise you out loud the communication & other pieces still out of this same cabinet, if you show your fart as many curiosities for this book as it has merits & me zeal to serve you. Farewell.
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CHAPTER I.

True preparation of the salt of the Philosophers to make a general solvent and a universal medicine.
Take pebbles which are as white and lucid as those which are found along the Lake of Geneva and on the banks of some rivers: grind them into a coarse powder, then mix six parts with one of Sun or Moon lime, made either by mercury, or by strong water, or otherwise. Melt this mixture in a fire such as that where artificial stones are made, & your matter will be converted into a mass like a magnifying glass, which you will subtly pulverize, after that put your powder in a well-stoppered glass vessel & digest it in a sand fire for eight days, & in this way the sulfur will rather rise from its earth, & will sublimate more easily. You will therefore sublimate the sulfur of your matter in a small well-luted Cucurbite and well corked on top,
The earth which does not sublimate and which remains at the bottom of the vessel is solid and black, but it will become beautiful, white and almost in the consistency of salt thanks to the reverberation, in which you will see it take on a face of all colors.
After the said earth has been reverberated for some time at discretion, excellent vinegar must be poured over it, which you will macerate together for twenty-four hours, &- the vinegar will attract the salt which is in the earth, which is the true root of the metals.
You will separate after inclination this vinegar imprinted in this way, & you will pour it again on the same earth as you will have previously reverberated, and will once again be imprint your vinegar which you will make digest as before, finally you will separate vinegar, & reverber your land again, on which you still have to pour vinegar and proceed in the same way. Separate peer & evaporate them over slow fire until the consumption of the third party; & then you will put your glass in the cold in a cellar, where small stones will form which can truly be called the Salt of the Philosophers & of the metals; Secret where the curiosity of so many philosophers could not succeed, finding there a shameful confusion, after cares as long as useless.
After you have made the final separation of the vinegar, you will take your earth, which you will find still moist, and put it in a humid place for the space of four or five weeks or more, and from there you will carry it to an oven on a fire of hot ashes or warm sand, and you will see the spirits or the flowers of salt rise on this earth in the form of transparent crystals, which you will carefully separate from your earth, and which you will dissolve in vinegar; that if you evaporate a third of this vinegar, you will make wet crystals as before. This earth which you have left after the separation of the crystals must be watered again with a little vinegar, in order to make it moist,
We notice the same effect in the mines of vitriol, or when we work on saltpetre; for thus from the earth of nitre and that of vitriol we draw salt every day. This should be understood as true salts drawn philosophically from the Sol & the Moon, indeed it is a Secret so rare that contempt would be criminal, since it is a medicine as sovereign as it is general, & which can without a doubt pass for the masterpiece of all chemical operations. For this salt suddenly dissolves in any liquor whatsoever, and penetrates by an admirable action all sorts of bodies, dissolving, driving out, and curing all that is found in it that is evil and contrary.
The Author seems to have touched on this point in the Treatise he wrote on the Medicine of the Ancient Philosophers, when he speaks in these terms:
What door of the Garden of the Hesperides have I just opened speaking so clearly of saltpeter? what free entry do I give to the stupid & ignorant, which should only be open to learned & amateurs, of the Muses? to prevent you from being deceived by taking my words literally, know that the saltpeter or the fusible salt of the Philosophers who have always given the name to Alchemy is not common saltpeter: nevertheless its composition & its marvelous nature is like the boss or like the Lesbian rule of our work: what can I say about having spoken more clearly & more openly than any of those who have preceded me.

A fine way to freeze the spirits of eau-de-vie, and to make a chemical concordance with an astronomical one, that is to say, to join terrestrial strong eau with sharp and celestial eau-de-vie, which is a marvelous solvent.
Take vitriol from Cyprus or that of Hungary, which is second in kind, two pounds, sublimated mercury and common cinnabar or antimony, each one pound, distill into an aquafortis in the common way. Take a pound of this strong water which you will redistill over new Cinnabar or sublimated Mercury, doing so three times, removing the faeces each time, as long as the said water is very clear, which you will put aside, and take care that it does not become stale. This done, take eight ounces of the jibs of the first strong water where the vitriol is, on which you will put a pound and a half weight of marc, of a very excellent brandy rectified seven times, the whole pulverized and well mixed be put in digestion in the wet in a well closed vessel and distilled over a small fire of sand from the beginning,then on the end with hunting fire, as long as all the spirits are out of it. Note that the faeces of this strong water will be red coral red, and that they will be reduced to vapors, even if you use the Cinnabar of antimony.
Have a large matrass or a glass curcurbite plunged into cold water & tied with a cord or so accommodated that it cannot lean this way or that way & that it remains immersed in the said water. Then have two small equal bottles, and in each you will put an ounce of one of these waters, so that they are full, then you will put them one after the other in a vessel, and you will then see a great boil rise which you will allow to settle, and add two other vials of the size of the others, full of the same waters, and again the same bubbling will rise, continuing little by little to join your waters in this way until the end. Leave afterwards to sit down & digest everything in the cold for twenty-four hours, then distill your said waters by the BMwhich will leave you with a salt like ice cream or like an eraser at the bottom. Note that you must not distil until dry, but the said salt must remain liquid: then cohob what you have distilled (& this by repeated distillations) as long as your distilled water has no more strength & that it has left all its spirits united with the salt, & when the number of your vegetable salt will be accomplished. You will notice that you will have to squeeze this weak water well, because it is by its means that you will be able to dissolve the said salt, to use it for the dissolution of bodies.then cohobe what you have distilled (& this by repeated distillations) as long as your distilled water no longer has any strength & until it has left all its spirits united with the salt, & then the number of your vegetable salt will be completed. You will notice that you will have to squeeze this weak water well, because it is by its means that you will be able to dissolve the said salt, to use it for the dissolution of bodies. then cohobe what you have distilled (& this by repeated distillations) as long as your distilled water no longer has any strength & until it has left all its spirits united with the salt, & then the number of your vegetable salt will be completed.You will notice that you will have to squeeze this weak water well, because it is by its means that you will be able to dissolve the said salt, to use it for the dissolution of bodies.
As for the salt, you will dry it very gently in a small closed matrass and stoppered so that the spirits cannot exhale from it, and when your material is dry, you will hermetically seal the matrass to better preserve your salt.

Another wonderful remover.

Take Antimony Cinnabar which is made of equal parts of raw Antimony & sublimed Mercury being pushed according to the degrees of the fire, so that at the first a gum comes out of it, & at the second which will be by a double fire above & below, the material is all sublimed both at the sides and at the neck of the retorte; thus you will make a beautiful Cinnabar of which you will take a part, vitriol & saltpeter of each another peerage, & put the whole in a long-necked matrass on a fire of ashes, until all the humidity is exhaled.
Then buckle your matrass well with cotton, continuing by degrees the fire of your twenty-four hour sublimation; & the matter will all sublimate into a snow-white mass in the shape of a hair, then presently you will take this mass & in a mortar of marble or glass you will soak it with oil of tartar, as long as the whole becomes a soft paste, which you will put in a large still which is very high accompanied by its yoke which you will lute & hold in the BM six or seven days, in which time your matter will convert it into flowing Mercury, which is already the Mercury of the sulfur of 'Antimony that can pass through leather.
Then add with this said philosopher's Mercury as much raw & vulgar Mercury & without having had any other preparation; these two Mercuries be joined & put in a clean vessel, be put in the belly of the hot horse for six days, then have them distilled on the fire of ashes, & the quicksilver will distill in the form of water which is a true Mercurial water which you will keep apart..
You will then take what has remained at the bottom of the vessel in the form of crystalline salt which you will dissolve with a little good brandy by the BM & at the bottom you will remain with a permanent & clear quicksilver oil: thus you have two various liquors in mercurial oils made in two ways, which are the keys to opening the metals of the Sun & the Moon, from which you can make great medicines for the health & preservation of the human bodies.

Another solvent which is metallic fiery water.
Make an amalgam of two ounces of fine tin with as much common Mercury in the ordinary way: grind this amalgam with an equal part of sublimed Mercury, put the whole in a glass in a humid place, & a part will be reduced to water in a few days.
Amalgamate moreover six ounces of Saturn with six ounces of common Mercury, to which you will add sublimate as much as the whole, namely twelve ounces, grind it & mix it with your tin paste, & in a short time the whole will dissolve into a soft paste covered with cloudy water & mixed with a little revivified Mercury. This pasty and partly aqueous solution will be pressed into a cloth, by which you will separate the flowing Mercury, and the rest of the turbid water will be put in a still to be distilled by the sand, and giving fire of degrees, you will see a limpid water come out which you will keep separately, then increasing the fire, the rest of the matter will sublimate in abundance in the capital like needles or flakes of wool of a very sweet taste, and this sublimated will be the true Salt of Saturn.
This languid & soft matter must be mixed with its water, & with the aid of repeated digestions & distillations, one can draw from it a fiery metallic brandy, or melt the said languid matter in a good spirit of wine, & then in one or the other of these two waters, you can put gold or silver salt there, as long as your waters can dissolve it. Digest everything & observe the method by which menstruation is made, that is to say the rectifications & the cohobations, to make of it a metallic fiery water, which will be a true dissolvent of nature, because nature loves nature & rejoices in its nature, as the Philosophers say. By means of these small crystals &, of this woolly matter, one can make a great medicine,even if you soak this material in oil of tartar & keep the way we have above observed in the Mercury of antimony, you will be able to render your said material languid in flowing Mercury, which is still an admirable secret. Finally, I am giving you many beautiful keys here and opening up a very favorable field for you to philosophize further.

Another universal solvent, called the vinegar of the Philosophers.
Take three pints of the strongest good vinegar you can find, and after having distilled it twice, you will put it on three pounds of well calcined tartar salt, then distill it very hard to make it give back all these spirits, by this means you will draw a third of your matter, which will be able to dissolve the pearls. And in the other two thirds which will remain in the vessel, you will put another two pounds of salt of tartar & distill as above; & as soon as you have distilled a third of it, you will put it aside to use it to dissolve the calcined coral & antimony. And in the remainder which will be in the vessel, add there still a pound of new salt of tartar & redistil: but with this blow you will push your distillation to the end, & until all spirits are drawn from it .And then you will have a marvelous solvent for all kinds of calcined metals & to extract salts, oils & even Mercurys. If therefore in this water you have dissolved some metal, and you have extracted the salt from it, remember to have the two parts distilled after the required digestions, and to put the remainder in the cold, so that it forms ice cubes which you will separate by inclination, which after you will wash several times with common water or brandy, which you will finally try to dissolve in the wet to convert them into oils.

Philosophical water to dissolve the two luminaries.
Take nitre salt armonia each one pound, small white river pebbles powdered, half a pound, mix everything well & throw in only one ounce at a time into a glazed earthenware vessel which is pierced towards the sides, & as soon as you have thrown this material, plug the hole with a wet cloth & first the spirits will rise & the water will distill: then open the hole to throw another ounce of your powder, which you will continue until you have a reasonable quantity of water which you will keep preciously, because this water by an occult virtue dissolves the two luminaries & makes one of a strong red color, & the other of a sapphire color. That if you wish to draw a beautiful oil redder than the very blood of your dissolved Salt, you will happily do it,if you separate the water from it by a gentle distillation, which you will make until the oleaginous substance; which you must repeat three times, always putting your water back in the vessel, which will finally come out without any flavor, leaving, as I said, at the bottom of the vessel, the most beautiful golden oil that can be seen in the world. That if you put new water on it for the fourth time, you will cause the Solaire oil to rise through the still with a very red and very beautiful color, and to separate the phlegm of this last solvent from the oily substance, you must put the whole thing in cold water and there red ice cubes will form; & continued as long as these freezings are done because by this means you will more easily separate the phlegm:

Thinner for all kinds of precious stones.
Take quicklime of the newest, put it roughly in powder in a glass vessel where you will pour over an excellent spirit of wine, which is without phlegm, lest the lime be corrupted, & let the lime float by three or four fingers, then let the whole thing digest in the cold until the lime has drunk the spirit of wine and is completely fermented. After that you will cover the vessel with a screed to separate by the BM the water from the spirit of wine which will be sweet & almost tasteless, because the lime will have retained the armoniacal salt of the brandy. This done, you will put on the marc which will remain at the bottom of the vessel, yet another good spirit of wine, & you will digest & distill as before, continuing thus until the lime refuses to drink the spirit of wine.And then it will be an indication that she will have taken as much as she needs. You will, however, distill the last imbibition over a slow fire, & the spirit of wine will come out this time acrid & pungent as it was before, & for the rest of the material you will mix it well with as much bol or tripoli, & will distill the whole thing over a high fire, like that from which the spirit of salt is made, & by this means you will extract a very powerful solvent, & capable of dissolving pearl crystals, & all sorts of precious stones.

Extraction of oils & tinctures from minerals.

Have a good pumice stone and the whitest you can find, powder it subtly, then water it with a good distilled vinegar and dry it, which you must repeat four times, and at the last you need to reverberate it four hours by a flame, which is not violent to prevent it from melting. Then cement with this powder well untied laminae of any metal whatsoever, even of Sun, & this by stratification in a great fire of a street lamp or of some other kind, for twenty-four hours, & your powder will take on the color of the metal, repeat this cementation until it has eaten away your metal laminae. Then take your colored powders & put them five times in a distilled vinegar that you will enliven with saltpeter,putting on a pound of this vinegar four ounces of the said salt, leaving this vinegar and this salt together in putrefaction in a retort, by which you will then distill your vinegar over a high heat, cohobing it until it has carried away almost all the faeces. This vinegar being prepared in this way, you will put your colored pumice stone in it, which will strip it of all its dye, leaving the whole thing for a fortnight in the horse's belly, & in this time the vinegar will draw the color from the body of your pumice stone, you will then empty it & presently put back in other vinegar, which you will continue until the extraction of the color is complete: you will then exhale your menses in the Bath, which will leave the dye at the bottom. of your metal. That if you wish to exalt it more,


GOLD.

CHAPTERII.

I. Manner of making potable gold, according to the method of Raymond Lully.
The great secret of the books of Raymond Lully d'Asilli & de Zacaire touching the quintessence is to draw an excellent spirit from distilled wine, by the great vessel sealed with cork & slow-burning paper.
When the spirit of wine is out, you will have to distil the rest by large stills, until the faeces begin to thicken, which you will put aside in some clean vessel, and continue your distillations to have a quantity of spirit of wine, phlegm, and faeces. You will then take the faeces which you have separated and put them in a steam bath still to extract the rest of their moisture, so that they remain like molten pitch at the bottom of your vessel. These faeces being thickened in this way, you will put them back in another still with their phlegm which floats them by four fingers, and will hold them four hours on a small fire of ashes to make the phlegm draw the tincture, which will be of combustible sulfur from the feces and the impurities of the wine.Your phlegm being colored, you will empty it gently by inclination to put it back again, which you will continue until it is no longer colored, and your earth remains white and crystalline at the bottom. That if the phlegm were to run out, you could recover it again, by separating the colored from its tincture: by doing this you will remain at the bottom a sulphur, or better said an oil red like blood, which you must preserve well. Note that this preparation of faeces could also be done by simple ablutions continued so many times that the earth remained at the bottom in the form of lapis, as when you purify the common tartar to make crystals of it. & may your earth remain as white & crystalline at bottom.That if the phlegm were to run out, you could recover it again, by separating the colored from its tincture: by doing this you will remain at the bottom a sulphur, or better said an oil red like blood, which you must preserve well. Note that this preparation of faeces could also be done by simple ablutions continued so many times that the earth remained at the bottom in the form of lapis, as when you purify the common tartar to make crystals of it. & may your earth remain as white & crystalline at bottom. That if the phlegm were to run out, you could recover it again, by separating the colored from its tincture: by doing this you will remain at the bottom a sulphur, or better said an oil red like blood, which you must preserve well.Note that this preparation of faeces could also be done by simple ablutions continued so many times that the earth remained at the bottom in the form of lapis, as when you purify the common tartar to make crystals of it.
These faeces thus prepared will be put into small long-necked cucurbits accompanied by their cover and their container, which you will seal hermetically, after having put on top of the brandy that you have redistilled, then boil them & distill them for six hours on a low fire of ashes, then put back in the vessel what you will have distilled & leave it for another hour, after which you will empty all this liquor by inclination as carefully as you can, so as not to disturb anything. : then you will put your new redistilled water over your faeces, continuing this process until they begin to turn black & no longer smoke on the silver slide. And to take advantage of the waters that you will have withdrawn by inclination from your land,you will have to put them in tightly closed vessels in a cold place, lest they evaporate, for this water is the animated water of the Philosophers. Then collect all your lands & put them in a matrass with a long, well-marked neck, which you will bury in sand, & which you will calcine on a moderate sublimation fire, holding them in the oven of Athanor for six whole days, at which time your lands will be whitened & very well calcined. You will then take your earth & divide it into two cucurbits of suitable size, into which you will pour the fourth part of their weight of the animated water of which we have just spoken, & having applied to them their screed & their container you will first hold them one day in a lukewarm Bain Marie, & then you will put them for two days on an ash fire,to make them distil slowly, & the water that will distil from them will be without taste & without strength, having left its spirit & all its virtue to its calcined earth, it will be necessary to pour in another animated water, always keeping the same proportion of which I spoke above, continuing the digestion in the bath, & the distillation with the ashes, until each earth has drunk its animated water & they are made volatile: which you will easily know by testing the red silver plate. gie in the fire, when you see your lands go up in smoke, that if they still do not completely evaporate, the previous operation will have to be repeated & continue until the entire exhalation of the material. This earth thus prepared is, according to the opinion of the great Lully,& the water that will distill from it will be tasteless & without strength, having left its spirit & all its virtue to its calcined earth, it will be necessary to pour in another animated water always keeping the same proportion of which I spoke above, continuing the digestion in the bath, & the distillation with the ashes, until each earth has drunk its animated water & they are made volatile: what you will easily know by testing the silver blade reddened in the fire, when you see your earths go up in smoke, that if they still do not completely evaporate, the preceding operation will have to reiterate & continue until the entire exhalation of the matter. This earth thus prepared is, according to the opinion of the great Lully, the true sulfur and the true Mercury of the Philosophers.& the water that will distill from it will be tasteless & without strength, having left its spirit & all its virtue to its calcined earth, it will be necessary to pour in another animated water always keeping the same proportion of which I spoke above, continuing the digestion in the bath, & the distillation with the ashes, until each earth has drunk its animated water & they are made volatile: what you will easily know by testing the silver blade reddened in the fire, when you see your earths go up in smoke, that if they still do not completely evaporate, the preceding operation will have to reiterate & continue until the entire exhalation of the matter. This earth thus prepared is, according to the opinion of the great Lully, the true sulfur and the true Mercury of the Philosophers.having left its spirit and all its virtue to its calcined earth, it will be necessary again to pour in another animated water always keeping the same proportion of which I spoke above, continuing the digestion in the bath, and the distillation with the ashes, until each earth has drunk its animated water and they are made volatile: what you will easily know by the test of the silver blade reddened in the fire, when you will see yours go up in smoke, that if they do not still totally evaporate, the previous operation will have to be repeated & continued until the entire exhalation of the material. This earth thus prepared is, according to the opinion of the great Lully, the true sulfur and the true Mercury of the Philosophers.having left its spirit and all its virtue to its calcined earth, it will be necessary again to pour in another animated water always keeping the same proportion of which I spoke above, continuing the digestion in the bath, and the distillation with the ashes, until each earth has drunk its animated water and they are made volatile: what you will easily know by the test of the silver blade reddened in the fire, when you will see yours go up in smoke, that if they do not still totally evaporate, the previous operation will have to be repeated & continued until the entire exhalation of the material. This earth thus prepared is, according to the opinion of the great Lully, the true sulfur and the true Mercury of the Philosophers.it will be necessary again to pour the other animated water always keeping the same proportion of which I spoke above, continuing the digestion in the bath, & the distillation with the ashes, until each earth has drunk its animated water & that they are made volatile: what you will easily know by the test of the silver blade reddened in the fire, when you see your earths go up in smoke, that if they still do not evaporate completely, the previous operation will have to be repeated & continue until the entire exhalation of matter. This earth thus prepared is, according to the opinion of the great Lully, the true sulfur and the true Mercury of the Philosophers.it will be necessary again to pour the other animated water always keeping the same proportion of which I spoke above, continuing the digestion in the bath, & the distillation with the ashes, until each earth has drunk its animated water & that they are made volatile: what you will easily know by the test of the silver blade reddened in the fire, when you see your earths go up in smoke, that if they still do not evaporate completely, the previous operation will have to be repeated & continue until the entire exhalation of matter. This earth thus prepared is, according to the opinion of the great Lully, the true sulfur and the true Mercury of the Philosophers.until each land has drunk its animated water & they are made volatile: what you will easily know by testing the silver blade reddened in the fire, when you will see your lands go up in smoke, that if they do not yet completely evaporate, the previous operation will have to be repeated & continue until the entire exhalation of the matter. This earth thus prepared is, according to the opinion of the great Lully, the true sulfur and the true Mercury of the Philosophers. until each land has drunk its animated water & they are made volatile: what you will easily know by testing the silver blade reddened in the fire, when you will see your lands go up in smoke, that if they do not yet completely evaporate, the previous operation will have to be repeated & continue until the entire exhalation of the matter.This earth thus prepared is, according to the opinion of the great Lully, the true sulfur and the true Mercury of the Philosophers.
When you see your entirely volatile earth on the slide, you will put it in two small pot stills with their receptacles & give it a slow fire of sublimation for a whole day, increasing it by degrees until the fourth day when the white fumes will no longer appear in the vessel, & your matter will be strongly attached to the sides in the form of foliated earth, which will be beautiful, clear & transparent like pearls & talc which you will then reduce to powder in a small marble mortar, & on this you will you will for distilled sulphurous spirit, not suddenly, but little by little in the form of watering, & finally you will put it in a strong Athanor three or four days, during which it will receive its perfect decoction, & will become like a pearly matter, which will be the radical balm of the metals,& however extracted from a natural vegetable.

Use of the previous sulfur of the Philosophers.
Take two or three ounces of the volatile earth of which we have just spoken, and which is called the sulfur of the Philosophers, and put it with six ounces of excellent spirit of wine drawn as above, in a long-necked matrass, which you will hold 34 hours in the BM & then the whole will be reduced to azure water, in which you will throw five ounces of prepared Sun, which will suddenly dissolve, making the water redden at the same time with its solvent. Distill afterwards in the bath by six times this solution, each time putting the water back on the faeces, & finally distill over a fire of ashes, & your gold will rise with the water, leaving the philosopher's sulfur at the bottom of the vessel, which you will reserve for other solutions. Repeat once again the dissolution in the bath,

Another use of the same Sulfur of the Philosophers.

Dissolve in the bath four ounces of our sulfur in two pounds of the brandy of which we have spoken, then distil through the ashes, and of this distilled water put in six ounces on one of calcined Sun, always adding new water to make the entire dissolution; & when it is done, you will circulate it in a bathing pelican, or else in the belly of the horse for forty days, & you will have a very precious liquor, from which if you separate the humor by small fire from the ashes, your Sol will remain like the other at the bottom of your vessel.

Other use of the same.
Reduce the Sun to Mercury & calcine it with common strong water, drawing out the water and putting it back three times over the faeces; & to complete this operation well you will put the faeces in a crucible between the hot coals, until they become all red & they no longer smoke, & then your gold will be perfectly calcined or precipitated; to which all you have to do is wash it several times with rose water until it is soft: when this golden lime is prepared in this way, you will put it in a vessel, and pour over it four times as much very good brandy, which you will cohober seven times with BM, and the last one on a small fire of ashes, after which your Sun will be reduced to the bottom in a liquor as beautiful as the others, and even more subtle.

II. Manner of making drinking gold.
You have to choose the best Montpellier tartar & calcine it until it is perfectly white, but you have to be careful that it does not melt: from this tartar thus prepared you will take a pound, & pour over it two ounces of a very excellent brandy, then you will distill the whole thing in a still in a steamy bath; & for what the tartar retains in itself the spirits & the armoniacal salt of the brandy, what you distill will be without taste: after this first distillation, you will have to pour over two or three ounces of the same water, & redistill it as before, & you will continue to distill thus little by little, until your brandy comes out with the same strength as you will have put it,for it is a certain mark that the tartar will have retained fire and the spirits of the water of life as much as it will need, and that being full of these volatile spirits, it will be able to be raised by sublimation into a substance which the Philosophers call foliated earth. This done you will take four ounces of this tartar thus alcoholized, & half a pound of a very good brandy, which you will mix together, & which you will circulate in a clean vessel, & then your brandy will become the color of Heaven, & capable of dissolving gold with a perfect solution, & by this means you will have a vegetable solvent less harmful than all the others.
Before putting the Sol in this solvent, it must be amalgamated with Mercury, and put this amalgam in strong water, where your Sun will be calcined into an impalpable powder, which you will wash very well to remove the salt and the spirits that the strong water may have left in it, then mix this lime with twice as many flowers of sulfur sublimated three times, and put the whole thing between two bowls of earth, and the sulfur will exhale and leave you has basically a spongy & very subtle Sun, you will put it in your celestial water at the BM & certainly in two times twenty-four hours, you will see the dissolution of your gold which will be true Drinkable soil, not only suitable for ordinary diseases, but even for all kinds of leprosy.

III. Manner of making drinking gold.
First, prepare ordinary salt, and take good tripoli and good brick, two or three pounds of each, according to the size of your retort, which you choose from good earth which withstands fire without bursting; put in this vessel your materials subtly pulverized & well mixed together, & know that your retort must have a hole behind opposite its neck & its beak, so that one can put the pipe of a blower there, which between two fingers inside to blow the fumes of the salt in the body of the container. You will also use your retort with its container, which must be very large and very ample, and such as one takes it to make vitriol oil: moreover, you will place on a small stove a vase such as a small matrass called a blower, which will be full of water, which you will continually boil on the fire ;for without that it would not breathe, and would in no way have its effect. First you have to give your retort a little fire, increasing it by two in two hours, without letting your blower play while the spirits of the salt rise by themselves, but only when they no longer pass; & that a new spirit will rise in smoke; which you will have to push by the action of the blower into the bottom of the container, which you will continue until the end of the smoke. So when all the spirit has passed (which can be seen in the acid drops which begin to distil) it will have to be rectified & separated from the water of the blower which will have passed with it, this done you will have a very white and very beautiful spirit, which you will keep apart in good Lorraine flasks,
After having thus drawn your spirit of salt, you will take gold leaves and amalgamate them with twice as much vulgar Mercury, which you will purge beforehand with salt and vinegar. Your amalgam being thus made, put it in a small sublimatory, to make it exhale half of the Mercury, then grind your amalgam in a mortar of glass or marble, adding to it the quarter of flowers of sulfur, & putting the whole in a crucible lute with another fire of wheel, & the Mercury & the sulfur will go away, & your Sun will remain calcined. There are some who repeat this operation three times, but only one will suffice.
Put this Solar Lime in a long-necked Lorraine glass matrass, pouring over four fingers of your spirit of salt, & putting it in digestion on hot ashes for a day, during which your spirit will draw the tincture from the Ground, & when it is well dyed, you will pour it by inclination into a retort, & above your lime you will still recover your spirit, & leave it in digestion as before until it is well colored, to pour it with the other into the same retort, continuing this process until the entire dissolution of your Sol, and that you no longer see at the bottom of the matrass but a little white faeces.
Take your retort where your colored spirits are assembled, & put it on a small fire to distil slowly by three or four cohobations, until the spirits come out weak & without vigor, then you will take new spirit, & put it on the matter which will have remained in the retort, & you will distill as before several times, until your Sol rises & passes with the spirit into the container, then you must reduce the fire & make it so small that the Sol cannot rise. with the spirit, but that it remains alone at the bottom of the retort in the form of red salt or thick & frozen oil. Finally you have to cover with very good brandy so strong in alcohol that it burns the whole test, from which you will dissolve your gold salt by putting them together in digestion,
This final dissolution being finished, you will distill your yellow brandy through the retort, and your tincture of Sol will then rise, or at least after a few reiterations. You will note that if all the Sol does not rise after several distillations, this will be a sign that the spirit of salt did not have the strength to decorporate it properly, this is why it will be necessary to put the body of gold again on top of the new spirit of salt & do as before.
The Sol having risen completely, you will separate the water of life from it, & pass the same water three or four times over its body, & finally it will remain alone in the form of yellow oil in the bottom of the vessel, which nevertheless has the virtue of dyeing red.
It should be noted that this golden liquor communicates and mixes with common water without revivification of its body, that is to say without reverting to a metallic body.
To strip your Solaire oil of all the acrimony that the spirit of salt could have left on it, you will have to throw on it a little oil of tartar, which will correct the strange taste of the salt so well that your drinking gold will remain as sweet and pleasant as liquorice.

IV. Manner of making drinking gold.

Calcine gold three times with Mercury & Sulfur according to the art we have already spoken of. Take an excellent spirit of salt, which is well made & dephlegmated, to extract the tincture of your golden lime, because it is proper to the spirit of salt to extract the sulfur or the red tincture of this noble metal; & that leaving his body of white color at the bottom of the vessel. It will be necessary to repeat the infusion of this spirit, on your matter, as many times as it will be necessary to complete the extraction of all the tincture, & to join all your colored liquors in a pot of still to separate the spirit of salt from it, by the distillation which you will make up to the spout. You will find after this operation at the bottom of your vase a very light & very red powder,

Manner of making drinking gold.
Take gold & dissolve it in the philosopher's water which dissolves the two luminaries & which is composed of nitre, & armoniac salt, as we have said above: after having thus dissolved your Sun, distill the solvent until the consistency of syrup, then put it back in again, & redistill it again as above, doing this three times; you will note that the waters leave the still tasteless, for what they leave there their spirits with the body of the Sun.
But to make the Sun pass through the retort or the alembic, it will be necessary once again to add a new solvent, which, animated by the Solar spirit, will perform admirable operations for health, and mainly for the cure of leprosy.
Having thus calcined your gold, you will throw it into common water with its solvent, & when the whole thing is mixed, you will put Mercury in it, which will cause the Sun to make an Eclipse, if you hold it for some time in cold digestion, because it will attract the whole Solar body, & you will be able to separate the water from it by inclination, & wash the amalgam of these two bodies several times to remove its acrimony, & separate all the spirits from the philosophical water. osphalic.
Having done this, you will be able to express this Mercury by the leather, in which your Solar lime will remain in amalgam, which you will put on the fire above the sheaf, that is to say, above a small flat bowl, so that the Mercury is exhaled, & you will be left with a lime of crocuses or Cinnabar, Solar impalpable, & very red, from which by the aid of a spirit of salt, one will be able to draw the tincture of the Sun, & from the spirit of salt impregn ated with this tincture, you will give three or four drops of it, which will do wonders for all inveterate diseases.

VI. Manner of making drinking gold.
Distill a good spirit of vitriol & pass it over the Jupiter over a large fire of ashes, & you will draw water of the most beautiful yellow color in the world, leave it overnight in an uncorked bottle, & put it the next day on gold leaves, which you will have put in the bottom of a glass still, over which you will pour as much more of a very excellent brandy, which is at least half dephlegmated, then distill your brandy in BM, & then in the ashes your solvent by the same still; that if your Sol was not yet reduced to oil at the bottom of your vessel, you will pour over your solvent and your brandy, which you will reiterate, so that your gold remains in oil with the first strength of the solvents, and on this oil you will have to put the solvent back on its own without brandy,which will take on the color of oil, the uses of which are diverse, for it is given to all ailments of the lungs, stomach, and heart, and in short to all sorts of illnesses, and infirmities, for the cure of which one gives a spoonful or a half of it according to the strength of the patient: it is also excellent for the prolongation of life, and for the precaution of all sorts of illnesses, by using one of this dose for three days in broth or otherwise: this liquor is so innocent that one can give it even to the three-day-old children. If you want to give it in oil, give it only a drop in broth or distilled lemon balm water.for the cure of which one gives a spoonful or a half according to the forces of the patient: it is also excellent for the prolongation of life, & for the precaution of all kinds of illnesses, by using one of this dose for three days in broth or otherwise: this liquor is so innocent that one can give it even to three-day-old children. If you want to give it in oil, give it only a drop in broth or distilled lemon balm water. for the cure of which one gives a spoonful or a half according to the forces of the patient: it is also excellent for the prolongation of life, & for the precaution of all kinds of illnesses, by using one of this dose for three days in broth or otherwise: this liquor is so innocent that one can give it even to three-day-old children.If you want to give it in oil, give it only a drop in broth or distilled lemon balm water.

VII. Manner of making drinking gold.
Take combs of honey from the month of May, which is of good consistency, put it in a well stoppered matrass & leave it in rest for twenty days, then put it in the BM where you will keep it for five days, in which time it will become pure & flowing: being thus, you will pass it through a cloth, & distill the colature over a slow fire, three times in a small still. Besides, you will prepare gold leaf on the marble, which you will put into powder, and of which you will take an ounce on which you will pour four ounces of your honey water into a matrass, which you will keep well closed on the BM for ten days, and in this term it will be made of the quintessence of honey and that of gold, an admirable oil, which to accomplish perfectly you will put in an alembic where by distillation over a fire of ashes,

VIII. Manner of making drinking gold.
provided that on this powder you make various infusions of brandy, until it is no longer tinged; this tincture being drawn from the force by these waters, you will separate it by a gentle distillation, until the consistency of oil, & you will be left with a drinkable tincture, the color of which is enhanced all the more as it ages: give a drop in a tablet of sugar, or in wine or broth, & you will restore the life of the infirm.

IX. Manner of making drinking gold.
In this oil of vitriol which you will have poured into a small still pot, you will throw gold in sheets folded into rolls, & hold it on the fire for an hour or more to be dissolved & made drinkable. And when these leaves are dissolved in this way, it will be necessary to put on top of the oil of clove and that of camphor, that is to say that on two ounces, for example of oil of vitriol, we put there an ounce of oil of clove, and one of that of camphor prepared, as we will say below. You will notice that as soon as you have mixed your clove and camphor oils with the vitriolic solution of your gold, the vessel will heat up, and a great boiling will arise from the antipathy of the spirits of these three oils. During this you will leave your materials in the cold,
For the oil of camphor proper to the use of which we have just spoken, it must be made of this sort. Take some camphor, powder it, & dissolve it in the oil of sweet almonds, over a slow fire, being dissolved perfectly, pour on this oil a reasonable quantity of good spirit of wine, & pass after all through the beak of a still over a sand fire, & your camphor oil will come out beautiful clear & very clean for the above operation.

X. Manner of making drinking gold.
Take some good pulverized candy sugar, melt it on the fire, & then make it drink from burning bricks, which, once well soaked, will be put either in a retorte, or in a still, to be distilled over a slow fire, & then you will have an oil of great efficiency; for not only can it dissolve by its acrir several solid bodies, but even the body of the Sun, which being prepared by Mercury, by strong water, & by sublimated sulfur according to the art, can be easily dissolved, being put in digestion for some time in the BM or in the belly of the horse, & finally it can be reduced to oil, if in the same bath we gently distill the liquor of the sugar, which will leave behind the oil of the Sun, or the easiest and most innocent drinkable gold that our art have yet prepared.

Gold oil of Rudelius Doctor of Scucberg in Misnie.

Take one ounce of gold, & sixteen ounces of antimony regulus, melt the regulus & during its fusion throw it over the Sun, leave them together for a quarter of an hour on the fire without blowing, remove your material at the end of this small space, put it in powder & lock it between two well-luted crucibles lest nothing breathe, & leave it on a wind oven fire a whole day, & your materials by such a fire will become almost black, let them cool & grind them again, & then put them on the stove & increase the fire this time: that if the material could easily be ground, it will be a sign that it will be necessary to renew the cement, & give it the fourth degree of fire, & you will find by this means a beautiful white powder,on which you will pour distilled vinegar which must by the way of digestion extract a brown color from this powder, & if you distill it in the bath there will remain at the bottom of your vessel a red oil, & almost the color of ruby.

Another gold oil very particular to the Sieur de la Violette.
Take two pounds of melted white salt, a pound and a half of fine saltpetre, remelt the whole thing in a large bowl, & throw over it a pound of pulverized tripoli, stirring the material well, & throwing it afterwards in a marble mortar to reduce it completely to powder. Note that if you can cover with these white pebbles from Lake Geneva, of which we have already spoken, or with these transparent fire stones, calcined and reduced to powder, as one usually does by throwing them in water, these things, I say, would be much better than tripoli.From this mixture, made as above, you will extract the spirits by means of an earthen retort, as those of etchings are made: This water, which can be called the spirit, or rather the quintessence of common salt and nitre, must be rectified with BM by ten or twelve cohobations, putting the distillation back on top of the marc, in order to draw from it that part of water which does not parttake of the nature of fire, which is called the aqueous phlegm . This operation must be continued until of two pounds of liquor, for example, you only have half a pound or a little more left, being then your spirit marvelously purified, ponderous & separated from all its superfluous aquosities.
Having done this, you will take a part of the regulus of antimony prepared with Mars, and two parts of sublimated Mercury, which you will pulverize, mix and put together in a retort to draw from it a gummy liquor, which you will dissolve in the wet, which you will redistill again through the retort to draw from it a clear and weighty oil like Mercury, which luckily follows, provided that in the distillation you separate the first humidity.
This clear & dephlegmated oil will be put in a retort of suitable size, & the spirit of salt that you have reserved above will also be put in the receptacle, then you will join the retort with its receptacle, & will lute them together so that nothing breathes in it, & giving fire to the sand by degrees, you will draw from the retort a mercurial liquor, which falling on the spirit of salt will make great & strange boils, which should not be surprising. . This distillation being completed, you will suddenly remove the container, & put it in cold water, to moderate a little the great fervor of the spirits, which will then be put in a small still accompanied by its screed & strong container, & the whole placed on the cold arena the material will distill without fire for three days,after which you can put fire to complete all the distillation of the liquor, however you will observe that it will rise a white powder which it is necessary that you put aside for other uses; as for the mercurial liquor, you will put it in strong bottles well stoppered, & well buried in wet sand, lest it be exhaled by the great fire by which it is animated.
On the other hand, you will make a philosopher's water of armoniacal salt and saltpetre, the way of which has been shown to you above, and in four ounces of this water, you will pour fifteen drops at most of your mercurial water which will compose an extractor to draw the tincture from an ounce of gold which you will have amalgamated with two parts of regulus, and when he has drawn all the tincture, you will separate it gently by inclination from your body to Add it again until only a white body remains, which you will do to the BM with a very slow heat.
Assemble all these tinted waters, & distill in the Bath what will be clearest, & the rest put it in a retort, push it & give it to the end on a high fire, in order to sublimate the neck of the retort the sun which will be dazzling & radiant like a ruby, which is dissolved in oil in the wet, the uses of which are admirable.
If you dilute the said mercurial water with the oil of vitriol or sulfur in equal portions, and draw the liquor out of it through the retort, you will have an oil which coagulates in the cold, and dissolves in the hot hand, or in some other slow heat, which is suitable for dissolving the Sun and the Moon.

Gold essence tincture.
Make an aqua regia with common salt or armoniacal salt, or spirit of salt, add to twelve ounces of this water four ounces of a sublimate which is made on purpose, and which has been sublimated seven times as it is sublimated the first time, that is to say, it is added to vitriol again in the usual proportion, so that it is perfectly imprinted with it. Having thus mixed these things, you will let them digest together four or five days, then distill them, and push the spirits until the Mercury sublimates. If you perform this operation as a good Artist, you will have a very excellent mercurial water, which dissolves & opens up the Soil marvelously well, because if you put gold in it, & hold everything in putrefaction three times, each time separating the phlegm from the solvent,your matter will remain quite open: but to open it to the sovereign degree, it will be necessary to put new mercurial water over your matter, even it will be necessary to cohober it until the third time, after which you will give a good fire of sublimation, and then you will see your Sun above your still red like exalted blood, volatile very capable of being reduced to rising rising to tincture by the help of the alcoholic animated vegetable spirit & made capable of the last exaltation of gold. This done you will wash your Tincture of the Sun with various waters to separate from it all the salts & all the acrimonious spirits which could have remained there, & in this way you will be able to make an excellent Tincture of the Sun. You might as well do it with the same aqua regia,

Sudorific gold.
You must make aqua regia in the usual way, and in this water you will dissolve gold in sheets or in filings, or else in small laminae, then you will pour drop by drop over your solution an excellent oil of tartar made by the resolution of its salt, and suddenly there will arise from the union of these two liquors a great boil, which makes it known that you must not pour your oil of tartar suddenly, but only drop by drop like us said, making small boils each time, continue this until the material no longer boils. Put the vase of your materials for some time in a cold place, and your calcined Sun will rush to the bottom of the vessel, and when you see it in this state, gently pour out all the water by inclination,
This is the Solar matter from which the Philosophers teach us to compose the great Sudorific which they call Burning Gold, which they use with the following precaution and manner. Take four or five grains of your golden lime, & put them in a silver spoon, which you will fill with an excellent spirit of wine, then put the fire there holding the spoon very straight, & covering it with a glass made in the shape of a bell you will sublimate your Sun, & observe during this sublimation, a little noise, & a little dark cloud, which will be around the glass. Having seen what you will put brandy on the same powder, & always proceed as above, repeating the same operation for a whole day, to have a reasonable quantity of your sublimated sun,which will have a very subtle and azure consistency, which you will scrape with feathers, and which you will keep carefully. If you give two or three grains of it with sugar or preserves or in some clean liquor, you will purge the sick extraordinarily with a thick and unctuous sweat, to chase away all kinds of putrid and pestilent fevers, and even the most inveterate and deplorable diseases.
I have several times observed that this powder of gold before being sublimated, and without any other preparation than simply being precipitated with the oil of tartar, is an incredible remedy for plagues, if one gives a few grains of it 24 hours after having been surprised, because it drives out all the venom by sweating, and succeeds very happily, provided that one remains at rest in bed, that one does not stir.
Besides, if you consider the great effects of this Solar Lime, & the facility it has for conceiving the flame, perhaps you will find that it would be suitable for making the fire of the philosophers, of which the Trevisan made such a point, & which it kept so hidden.

Purgative gold.
Take from an oil drawn from equal parts of purified antimony & sublimed Mercury, oil of salt extracted in the common way, as much of one as of the other, & mix them together according to the art, then distill them, & in the liquor which you will draw from them put gold there, & you will see it dissolve suddenly. This liqueur or solution of Sun being mixed with a little sugar or some tasteful preserve, will perform admirable operations, if you give it at discretion according to the age and strength of the sick person.If we also draw the liquor from this solution of gold through the still, there will remain a powder at the bottom of the vessel, which, retaining in itself the mercurial virtues of antimony and sublimate, can be given in substance or in infusion for a purgative medicine, after having been well softened.
Or if you precipitate in cold water all the solution as soon as it is done, you will make a curd much more excellent than the ordinary, for what the golden lime will be included in it, which being softened by various ablutions, it will be a great purgative remedy, whether you give it in substance or in infusion with some suitable liquor.

Gold of life.
This gold of life is made with one part of pure gold & four parts of Mercury amalgamated & dissolved together with common strong water, because Mercury dissolves in this water, & the Sun rushes into it in powder. Then distill the strong water until dry, so that the whole precipitates to the bottom, put new strong water on the dry matter, distill again & repeat this two or three times: Finally put this matter in the sheaf to calcine it perfectly, & to chase away all the acrimony of the strong waters, wash your lime first with fountain water & then with excellent brandy, & you will have a miraculous precipitate, from which if you give one or more two scruples only with two drachmas of the essence of aloes, & as much of that of myrrh separately extracted,
We can, if we want to extract a salt, or even a very noble essence from this Solar precipitate, if after having been well softened by various ablutions of common water, we put it in digestion in vinegar for some time, which you can make an excellent medicine, when after having precipitated it with the oil of tartar, as it is necessary to extract the essence, we come to soften it again with common water, & finally with good spirit of wine.

Vegetable gold.
Take a drachma of gold in filings or calcined in any way whatsoever, and filings or lime from the moon three drachmas, common cinnabar Mercury, or that of cinnabar made of antimony and sublimate twelve drachmas, mix the whole thing together in a large matrass, and after having stopped it up with cotton wool only, you will put it on a moderately hot fire, and you will see the matter grow and vegetate from day to day, in form of leaves, which can happen in less than three weeks, and which will give as much pleasure as astonishment to see it, of which you will be able to make some beautiful composition for health.

Calcined Gold of the Philosophers.
you will continue to put new waters into it until all the spirits of the etchings come out of it. After that you will mix your powder with six ounces of good prepared common salt, which you will put in a crucible covered with another pierced, & will carry it to a small oven full of hot coals, where you will keep it for 24 hours, letting the fire die over the crucibles, you will finally draw the salt from it by dissolving & boiling in boiling water & your gold will remain to you, pure & clean, prepared & calcined in the manner of the Philosophers.
You have here several fine methods of extracting spirits from gold, of extracting tinctures from them, and of reducing them to drinkable essence. We could give you several other descriptions of them which are found in the writings of our Author, having had knowledge of them (as he himself says in his Tetrad) in more than fifty ways, but we content ourselves with presenting these to you, with the promise of soon giving you the communication of the rest.

MONEY.
CHAPTER III.

Beautiful preparation of Moon against the affections of the brain.
To prepare the moon and make it clean against the most troublesome Diseases of the brain, it must be philosophically calcineed, and then dissolved in the excellent oil of vitriol from cyprus, which alone has this virtue of reducing the perfect metals to liquor without the aid of saltpeter: when you have dissolved the moon Will Evaporate or Distill Half of the Solvent, and Put the Rest in the Cold, Where The Ice Cubes of the Moon Will Be Form, Which You Will You Can Resolve in Sage Oil to Use It Against Mania & Other Illnesses of This Nature.

Other preparation.
A certain Philosopher friend of mine & great personage, prepares an excellent remedy with the Moon in this way, he calcines silver blades with sulphur, placing them bed on bed between two crucibles, taking good care that the sulfur does not ignite or ignite in any way, & so that the sulfur becomes black as coal, he separates it from the blades of the Moon with water, & finds afterward his blades calcined & in a state of this power to reduce them to subtle lime, crushing them in a mortar , & when he has prepared this lime puts it in a retort & pours water over it, then he distils & cohobes several times, & says that by this means the spirit of the Moon passes partly with the water, & that if only a few spoonfuls of this water are given to patients with mania, melancholy, & other infirmities of the brain,one receives wonderful relief.

Moon Oil.
Take Moon blades cut into small pieces, & dissolve them in strong water, which is rectified with tartar salt or compounded with the same salt, & when your Moon will be dissolved by this water, pour in a little good brandy & then let it rest for 24 hours in a cold & humid place, & in this time, small crystals should form at the bottom: on the other hand you will take egg whites, which you will distill, & in this distilled water you will digest your crystals for two or three days, and then you will put the whole thing in a still where you will distill by bathing, and you will have left at the bottom of the vessel a very precious oil of silver.

Lunar Mercury.
The Mercury of the Moon is drawn in various ways, sometimes the long and frequent triturations of the common Mercury with the Moon are used, until the whole passes through the buff in the form of quicksilver. Sometimes we use silver lime made with vulgar Mercury, which we soak with oil of tartar and vinegar enlivened with armoniacal salt, and which we resurrect afterwards by means of hot waters which separate the faeces from the lime of the Moon and bring out the Mercury. This way is much better than that of the putrefactions which several others make in the ressuscitative salts and which they sublimate afterwards. In truth, Lunar Mercury is obtained from this kind, but it is in very small quantities.
Now, to more easily extract the Mercury from the silver, it is necessary to take very fine lunar films, put them in a matrass & pour over the calcined resuscitative vegetable until whiteness, & on this vegetable one must put flying eagle & armoniacal salt, & that the doses are in such proportion that on three ounces of Moon lamina, one is content to put as much resuscitative vegetable as is needed to cover the laminae, & three ounces of the flying eagle, & one and a half ounce s of armoniacal salt, put the whole in a terrine over a fire that you will manage according to the art, & you will find at the bottom your Moon all eaten away, which will have left you two ounces of flowing Mercury, or at least one and a half ounces, if you work regularly.

Calcination of Moon.
Amalgamate one ounce of Moon cup in filings or in leaves with eight ounces of purified Mercury, grind this matter with common salt prepared for an hour in a wooden mortar, then remove the salt by ablutions of common water, this done, grind the same thing again for an hour with pure simple water, after you will put salt in the water to grind this amalgam for another hour, then you will repeat the same thing with water alone, again with salt, continuing this process up to twenty times: but at the last you will leave the salt there & put the whole thing in a large crucible between the burning coals, always turning & grinding this mixture, until the Mercury is entirely exhaled from it, finally you will wash your remaining matter with hot water to purify it of its salt, & you will find at the bottom of your vase a very subtle moon lime,very white & such as the philosophical lime of metals should be.

IRON.
CHAPTER IV.

Preparation of iron called Crocus Martis.
Take steel filing or blades that are well untied & sprinkle them with urine or common water only, & in a short time it will form a rust on the surface of the material: first that you will see it, you will throw your steel in boiling water which will attract all the rust, if you disturb the water for some time with your hands, because by such agitation rust; you will take this mass & put it in a crucible in a wind oven, & suddenly your mars will turn red, which will be very easy to dissolve in strong water composed of two parts of vitriol, one of common salt & two of bowl: if you leave your red steel in this water for four or five days,

Regulates Mars.
This regulus is prepared in various ways, but this one is considered the best when you take four ounces of black nails, put them in a crucible over a high fire to make them redden, and then throw eight ounces of antimony on top of it with a little saltpetre, and the whole thing melts easily in water without mixing tartar in it as you usually do. Take your crucible from the fire and let it cool in the air. then break the crucible, and you will find the regulus at the bottom, which you will separate from its filth, and which you will remelt once again with an ounce of saltpetre: afterwards you will remelt it alone twice, and you will find at the last four or five ounces of very fine regulus, which will bear the impression of the star of Mars.

Tincture of Mars.
Take the aforesaid Mars regulus, such quantity as you like, & with sand from Etampes or pumice stone, prepared in the manner we have already specified, make bed upon bed in a crucible which you will luter, & which you will put after calcining in the fire of a street lamp for 24 hours, then being cold, you will put all your material into a subtle powder, & pour over it good white vinegar to draw out the tincture, which will make your vinegar vermilion & the most beautiful of the world, of which you will give a full spoonful in broth to sick women of white flowers, or of the flow of maternal blood. This same remedy is also used to stop all sorts of hemorrhages & overflows of blood.With this martial regulus one can add all the metals, to draw from it after the dyeing according to the method which we have just prescribed,

Salt or crystal of Mars.
You have to take clinker, put it into powder as subtly as possible, after that you have to reverberate it for 24 hours, & pour over it a good distilled vinegar, to extract the salt or the crystal from your matter, & when your extract is colored, you will pour it by inclination to put another in its place, & when you have enough dyed vinegar, you will have it distilled until dry, & in the bottom of your vessel, you will find a yellow matter hearth, which is the salt you ask for. You will make it, if you want, white as snow, if you add vinegar again on top of it and let it digest and distill it as before, until your salt remains very white and crystalline and the vinegar comes out tasteless like water,if you give a spoonful or two of this water, and about five or six grains of this salt, you will produce incredible effects against jaundice, dropsy, cachexia, pale colors and other similar diseases. And what seems most marvelous is that this operation is done without violence, and without any other manifest action than that of the urine.

COPPER.
CHAPTER V.
Means of extracting vitriol from Venus.
The vitriol that is drawn from copper passes into the sentiment of all philosophers for the best of all, as much for human bodies as for metals.
The method of extracting it requires that one take the best copper calcined by sulphur, or an excellent verdigris, or a good aes ustum, and that one or the other of these three prepared coppers be mixed with vinegar, to extract the salt and the crystals, and afterwards that the vinegar be exhaled until dry, and the matter which remains at the bottom of the vessel is what is called Venus vitriol.
We prepare it further, sometimes we extract the oil, from which we use mainly in the precipitation of the Mercury of Venus, which precipitate serves as an excellent sudorific & bezoaric against all kinds of plagues, if we give a grain or two only.

Mercury from Venus.
The shortest preparation of this Mercury is to take one part of the purest and freshest copper filings that can be found, two parts of sublimated armoniacal salt, and as much or a little more of the gold salt; then we put these three things into powder as subtly as possible, then being mixed, we put them in a large matrass which we bury in the sand, to give it a double fire, that is to say above & below until the matter can melt like wax, & then you will pull your matrass out of the sand & the fire, to throw it into a vessel full of fresh water, & suddenly your Mercury will flow in the clear & clean water, of greenish color .
Take some of this Mercury of Venus, put it in an alembic pot, & pour over some good spirit of sulfur or vitriol, keep it in digestion for some time & then distill, put the distillation back over the marc of your copper, redistill, continue this operation, until your matter becomes the color of marigold, & to make it more innocent you will sweeten it & strip it of the impressions of salt, by several ablutions of the waters proper to this effect: If this operation is done exactly, you have in hand one of the greatest sud orific remedies against the plague, the dose of which is only one grain, or two at the most, with some suitable liquor.

TIN.
CHAPTER VI.
Specific remedy taken from tin flowers against matrix suffocations.
You have to draw the flowers of Jupiter by means of a vessel of earth, which is composed of several small pots, placed one on the other, & lutes so that they make only one body & one channel, & in this kind of vessel you will throw little by little the limb of Jupiter, mixed with pulverized saltpeter, but before throwing this material, your vessel must be heated until redness, & you will see immediately afterwards the projection ascends the spirit of saltpetre, which will soon distill into the other lower vessels. If you perform this operation according to the art, you will sublimate the Jupiter in the form of flowers, & finally you will see it distill in the other vessels which are above, so that from a pound of Jupiter, you can extract at least half a pound of spirit.

Excellent powder for eye suffusion prepared with tin.

Before proceeding to the particular remedy of the suffusion of the eyes, it is necessary to use generals & work above all at the entrenchment of the first cause, & at the suppression of the fluxions which fall from the brain on this noble part. Afterwards, the sick eyes must be watered with the water that you will prepare using this method.
But you will notice that the redness of the second ignition must be great, & that the material to be fired for the second time must be powdered. so much so that it must be so dry and so hot that it can drink half of the distilled vinegar twice: this matter being thus twice extinguished, it must be left to rest for some time, so that it goes to the bottom, and then you will exhale the vinegar from it on a small fire of ashes, and there will remain a pasty matter on which you will pour pink water, which floats two or three fingers, but all this must be put in this way in a mine lute matrass. on an ordinary bath, to be circulated two or three days, at the end of which you will find a specific & clean water against all the suffusions of the sight,

LEAD.
CHAPTER VII.

Preparation of Saturn tested against leprosy of human and metallic bodies, and of which one can make an Olympic solvent.
Distill a great quantity of good vinegar, until you have a punch of it, for it is the base and the foundation of this work. And to fortify it better, distil it several times over the faeces, then dilute all that you have distilled with as much else, which will not be dephlegmated & pass them together, so that the distillate becomes more effective. For the lees that will remain at the bottom, they can be put in a retort over a good fire, by the force of which one can extract an excellent oil, which can burn by itself, and dissolve all kinds of minerals.
On this crystalline material, you will put new distilled vinegar for the last time, you will dissolve the whole over a slow fire, & filter it so that a perfectly pure & clean menstruation takes place, which having passed through the vaporous bath, will leave in the bottom of the still a melting substance like wax, which hardens in the cold as it melts in the heat. Afterwards you will divide this melting matter into several stills, and put on top of the new menses little by little, as if to feed and water it only, which you will do by pouring in at first only two ounces, then three, then five, then seven, increasing in this way until the matter no longer wishes to receive it, which you will know when you see that the solvent will come out of it as sour as it was at the beginning,so that whenever you distil your imbued matter, you will take care to continue until the phlegm is as sour as before, for this is how the child rejects the milk of its nurse after its stomach is filled with it. This matter being thus prepared & converted into an excellent & precious gum, you will digest it in a vaporous bath for the space of 30 or 40 days, until it becomes black in color, & of a stinking odor like that of liquid pitch, & it is from this liquid & black pitch, that you must draw on the same bath an excellent phlegm, which could serve as menses suitable for drawing from the calcined earth a precious salt, as we will say below. after: & on the other side by the continual distillation that you will make of the said pitch on the arena,
To complete the perfection of this dissolvent, you must put this eau de vie of Saturn back on a gentle bath, in a still with a very long neck, where the purest spirit of this water will rise first imperceptibly, until you will see appear a few lines and a few filaments through the glass of the screed, which will be an infallible sign that the whole spirit has risen, which is why you will then stop this distillation, to withdraw this first precious spirit which you will carefully keep in place. cold, & in a well sealed vessel. After this spirit, it will come out by a stronger bath, a milky phlegm which can be used much better than the first of which we have spoken above, to wash your calcined matter, & finally by a stronger degree of fire, after having changed receptacle,
As for the earth or faeces which will remain at the bottom of the retorts in the form of black powder, they can still be dissolved by another new distilled vinegar, & be converted by this means into new lapils of a sticky & gummy consistency, & finally by the aid of the digestions & distillations observed above, into marvelously active & burning spirits. Some divide this earth in two, and although Isaac himself rejects this division, nevertheless I consider that the best and the shortest will be to calcine all the earth together, and to reverberate it with a gentle flame until it is yellow like ochre, and when this earth will be yellow from the cohobation of phlegm, the salt can again be separated from it, according to the ordinary rules and operations of the art.
Having arrived at the extraction of this rare and precious salt, you will take the first spirit that you will have drawn little by little by various cohobations and that you will have reserved, then you will pour it on an ounce of this last salt, reiterating this imbibition, until an ounce of this salt weighs three or four, and that it has retained the weight of the armoniacal salt of this spirit, and that finally the volatile on passes the fixed: if you work at this operation exactly, you will find at the bottom an excellent earth, which you will sublimate in a meeting of very clear & well sealed glass, where you will have the pleasure of seeing there sublimate a philosophical Mercury in the form of a foliated earth, or rather of a beautiful talc that you will keep as a material of great price.
To crown this work it is necessary to take a part of this Mercury and join it with the spirit of which we have spoken above, or else with as much of the first fiery water to make of it a dissolvent of Sun and Moon, such as the Philosophers have imagined it, capable of reducing them to a spirit, without destroying their bodies, nor without losing their species. So much so that from this truly philosophical dissolution, one can make admirable works for the health of human bodies, as well as metallic ones. This can even be done with coral like litharge, and in this case you will no doubt make of it the most beautiful and the most innocent of all solvents.

Another dissolver of gold by the icicles of Saturn.

or rather passing it over sulfur or vitriol; then you will put the whole thing in digestion in the bath for three or four days; finally distil this brandy thus rectified on the ice cubes of which we have just spoken, until the consistency of honey or oil.This done, you will let your matter freeze again in the form of ice cubes which you will grind with calcined gold, namely six weights of ice cubes with one of gold only, then you will put the whole thing in a tightly stoppered retort in the belly of the horse for the space of 40 days, from there you will carry your vessel on a fire of ashes, to gently distill all the strange humidity from it, & putting it afterwards on the sand you will draw the oil from it with a lot of white smoke that the Philosopher ers call menstrual, what you will do increasing the fire, by the degrees of art.To successfully complete this work, you will take all the oil & put it in a small still on a very soft BM, to draw from it first the brandy, & secondly the phlegm that you will discern from the brandy by the tears which will fall back into the container. Then take this eau de vie, & put it on the faeces of your oil, & thus leave & the other two days in the bath, & as long as your water becomes colored there, then distill this tinted water & put it back on the matter, to distill it again, & thus continue to distill & put the water back on the faeces of the oil until you have drawn all the tincture from it. That if the waters you drew from your oil were not sufficient for the entire extraction of your tincture,

Saturn oil.
Take some lead lime & dissolve it in very good vinegar, then filter & over a slow fire evaporate the three parts of your vinegar, finally let the rest freeze for 24 hours or in the air if it is in Winter, or in the cellar if it is in Summer, & in that time the lead salt will turn into ice cubes, separate your vinegar afterwards, & put the ice cubes on a small ash fire to separate the rest of the vinegar that you may have left there: & this operation will be done by bathing until it leaves your ice cubes entirely dry. When they are in this state, you will put them, after having reduced them to powder, in a matrass, & pour over the new vinegar which is of the same strength as the previous one, then you will dissolve,filter & evaporate from the three parts of the two of your menses, & let finally form ice cubes in the cold of the air or of the cellar as before. You must then distil the rest of your vinegar by the retort over a slow fire from the beginning, & then at such a degree of heat that a beautiful red oil comes out of it, which having happened, you will quickly change your container, & then increasing the fire of flame, you will draw all the oil of Saturn whose qualities are diverse, both for the medicine of human bodies and for that of metals.

Another excellent oil of Saturn.
It is necessary to extract the salt from calcined Saturn, or from white lead according to the method of the art, then dissolve it, filter it & coagulate it with common waters, as many times as necessary to make it perfectly white & crystalline. Afterwards you will put it in the BM with a good spirit of wine to circulate it for some time, so that it becomes clearer & purer than it is usually by common preparations, & finally it must be put back in the same bath with pink water, to circulate it as before. This salt thus prepared resolves into a precious oil, therefore 4 or 5 drops only mixed with a suitable liquor, will make a very great and very prompt remedy against all internal inflammations, such as peripneumonia, pleurisy, liver heat, fevers, and the like.Its virtues go even further, because they extinguish all external inflammations & even heal ophthalmia, if a little of this oil is mixed with prepared ruthia. It is also excellent against all kinds of canker ulcers.

Saturn flowers which are a specific remedy for ophthalmia.
It is necessary to make a vessel of earth which is composed of eight or nine small pots, placed one on the other, as we said in the Chapter of pewter, & through the channel you will throw little by little the lead frame mixed with saltpeter, after the vessel is red with fire, then you will see the spirit of the saltpeter distilled by the spout of the first pot below, & the sweetness of Saturn will rise in the other upper vessels in the form of flowers, if although from a pound of Saturn you will always get half a pound of these flowers, from which you will make salt with vinegar & from this salt reduced in oil you will have an excellent remedy against ophthalmia & against all diseases of the eyes.

Extraction of mercury from Saturn.
Take two pounds of good minium such as it is when it can be converted quickly into glass, put it in a crucible in the middle of a great fire & water it with an excellent vinegar six or seven times, then mix with this minium prepared in this way as much raw tartar, & finally distill this mixture of minium & tartar through the retort for the space of twelve hours, but make the fire very good from the beginning, & you will have seventeen ounces of mercury in your container which will must be half-full of cold water: & for what at the bottom of the retort there is real gold, one can imagine with apparent reason that they are gold, which the Philosophers have called the fixed grain separated from its Mercury, & in fact such a Saturnian mercury is much lighter & more lively than is vulgar mercury.

Another way to extract Mercury from Saturn.
Mix two pounds of minium with as much good tartar, & put them in a pot that is glazed & pierced with small holes in the bottom, then put this pot on another that is neither glazed nor pierced, which you will put underground to serve as a container, after having well fought the joints & put in the bottom a little fresh water to attract the mercury, & prevent the rupture of the vessel. Finally, cover the pot which contains the matter well with another very well-lit pot, & give it a mediocre fire during the first six hours, then a greater fire during the six others, & finally give it a very high fire for the last six hours, & you will find the mercury of Saturn at the bottom of your container.

Manner of making the glass of Saturn.
Saturn is a metal whose effects are so great & so marvelous for the very health of human bodies, that not only in the state in which we have just prepared it, it can sometimes produce great things, but also, if by the rules of true philosophy it is vitrified by the force of calcinations & reverberations. For glass being as it is, the extreme degree, and the last perfection to which all things can be brought by art, there must be no doubt that that of lead does not possess in itself, not only a very pure matter, but also an extraordinary abundance of salt, greater even than one can find in any other metal, for Saturn abounds so strongly in salt that by vitrification the two other principles, which are the liquors and the sulfurs are completely lost. Cauete, Cauete has been vitrified” .This teaches us that all metallic things which partake more of salt than of the two other principles, can be entirely vitrified, among which the Saturn, of which we are speaking, which being more provided with salt than with mercury or sulphur, is easily reduced to glass. It is not that the other metals cannot also be reduced to it by length and by the force of a continual fire, except gold, which being of a more perfect nature than the other metals because of the great equality and combination of the elements which are in it, cannot in any way be reduced to glass, for it is found so justly composed of water, earth and air, that nothing can exert on it any alteration of rust or corruption, even fire could not print any change in its mass. , especially since it is of an igneous nature,
As for iron, it is not absolutely impossible to vitrify it, although it is only vitrified with great difficulty, for it partakes much more of sulphur, which is of an igneous nature, than of salt, which as we have said, is the basis of all vitrifications, for salt, being of an earthly nature, is purified by the continual force of fire, and is finally reduced to glass and to a pellucid and transparent nature.
Silver is hardly less difficult to become glass than iron, for being a highly fixed substance, and if it is not that it is partly pushed to this perfection, by the addition of salts and by the length of large fires, still it will not really be glass, but rather a hyacinth-colored stone, which the violence of the fire will have caused to lose its sapphire, for what it is volatile, and not entirely fixed like the substance of silver.
But let us return to our Saturn, which is the foundation from which all sorts of artificial gems are made, after the Artists reduced it to ice cubes with the aid of vegetable dissolving acid. We therefore make the glass of Saturn in this way.
Take minium four parts, Etampes sand or small white river pebbles, one part well calcined, mix that in a crucible in a big fire, & you will quickly make a glass that will be yellow in color & transparent in nature, which can give a good ingredient to medicines that are too fixed, & too dry & consequently deprived of their incineration.
You will notice that this glass of Saturn is not composed of the pebbles, nor of any other thing that one can add to its vitrification, but that it is such of its own nature, & as proof of this, if you put it back in the same metallic nature where it was, & that afterwards without making it pass through any calcination, you put it, all lead that it is, in a well-luted crucible in the furnace of a glassmaker or a potter, during all the mixture time of the firing of the pots, & that after having removed your material, you grind what will not be vitrified from the first time, that you put it back in the same oven to be reverberated there again, & that you continue this three or four times, you will find your Saturn entirely reduced to a very beautiful glass & very specific to the composition of precious stones.If you want to exempt yourself from the trouble of pulverizing your material so often, all you have to do is put it in the glassmaker's fire, because after five or six days that it will have remained in this continual fire, it will not fail to vitrify there as well as in any other way.
I think that if we sublimated this glass of Saturn with salt armoniac we could make it melting by candlelight, and by this means make a transparent wax. As also if one mixed this same glass previously reduced to powder, with camphor, or fuccinum, or with some other sulphurous and transparent resin or gum, one could make of it a beautiful diaphanous and pellucid Spanish wax, which would in truth only be suitable for the use of the great Lords, because it would be extremely expensive.

MERCURY.
CHAPTER VIII.

Purification of Mercury.
Take good sublimated Mercury & dissolve it in strong water, composed of equal parts of rosacea & moderately calcined saltpetre, & when your Mercury is well dissolved, put the solution in a still pot to separate the three parts over a small fire of ashes, after that, uncover your gourd & put it all uncovered in a bowl full of water to the edges of the material, & everything in a very cold & very humid cellar, & you will find your mercury, most of which will be reduced to ice cubes at the end of six days, and the rest will remain separated in the form of black earth, which is nothing but its useless dross and faeces.

Another purification of Mercury.
Take common Mercury & have it sublimated ten times, but you must renew the vitriol & the salt each time, & moreover wash it well after each sublimation with boiling water, by which all the strange falls which are found with Mercury are dissolved, like the spirits of vitriol & the salt e, it becomes greatly pure & clean, & consequently suitable for all, the beautiful operations of Chemistry.

Sublimation of Mercury.

finally take the sublimate, both the one you find hard & firm, as well as the one you will see in flour or white powder, & grind them again with as much vitriol, which is prepared in such a way that after having dephlegmated & soaked with its phlegm by repeated distillations, it finally becomes philosophically colcotar. This sublimate therefore and this colcotar being well mixed, will be put in a glass bottle, or for the best, in a very large matrass, buried in the sand in a furnace of sublimation, then make the fire so strong that the vessel blushes at the end, and in seven or eight hours, your Mercury will rise very beautiful and very crystalline, after having carried with it the best essence or the best sulfur of vitriol, and this you must repeat several times.always adding good prepared and dephlegmated vitriol, and continuing until your Mercury no longer wants it, which you will know by the weight of your sublimate, which after its perfect preparation will no longer increase as before, because until then the sublimate, drinking the spirits of vitriol and salt, weighs two ounces more, or one and a half ounces at least. And note that, because these are the real weights & the real measures of the Philosophers & the Sages, which they never wanted to declare, & which they kept so secret. or an ounce and a half at the very least. And note that, because these are the real weights & the real measures of the Philosophers & the Sages, which they never wanted to declare, & which they kept so secret.And note that, because these are the real weights & the real measures of the Philosophers & the Sages, which they never wanted to declare, & which they kept so secret.

Another sublimation of Mercury.
Calcine over a very slow fire two pounds of good Roman vitriol, or that of Hungary for the best, which touches as well as copper on a knife, then put this vitriol in a bowl of glazed earthenware, always stirring with a spatula, lest the vitriol as it dries out, does not adhere to the sides of the terrine, & when it is like a paste, run a pound of good Cinnabar Mercury in it little by little, and incorporate so well all together so that the Mercury does not appear there, then mix in a pound of prepared common salt, & grind the whole thing well together on the marble, & putting this mixture between two bowls, give the same degrees of fire as we said in the previous sublimation, & you will make a very beautiful sublimate. Remix this sublimated again with new material,
There is no need to mix salt with the last sublimations, it is enough only to put vitriol philosophically desiccated, that is to say soaked in its phlegm by various distillations, and by this means you will make one of the most beautiful and most perfect sublimated in the world.
Excellent precipitates of Mercury.
Others after one or other of the salts, of which we have spoken, have been put there, add fountain water, which they distil until dry, renewing these distillations several times with common water, and the matter being dry at the bottom of the still, they sublimate it, and so that in this sublimation the Mercury attracts the acrid spirit of the vitriol, so that it cannot escape by any distillation. ; & consequently remains suspect to Doctors, & dangerous to the sick, they make it pass through the white of an egg. However, the first method of these precipitates seems to me the best. & the matter being dry at the bottom of the still they make it sublimate, & for what in this sublimation the Mercury attracts the acrid spirit of the vitriol, so that it cannot go away by any distillation;& consequently remains suspect to Doctors, & dangerous to the sick, they make it pass through the white of an egg. However, the first method of these precipitates seems to me the best. & the matter being dry at the bottom of the still they make it sublimate, & for what in this sublimation the Mercury attracts the acrid spirit of the vitriol, so that it cannot go away by any distillation; & consequently remains suspect to Doctors, & dangerous to the sick, they make it pass through the white of an egg. However, the first method of these precipitates seems to me the best.
There are others who often cause the etching to pass over the Mercury, as we will say below to the mineral Turbith of the Flemish. As for me, I would rather sublimate the Mercury by precipitating it with sulfur oil, & put on such a precipitate prepared sea salt, so that the Mercury becomes impregnated with the fire of nature, & then with the same water, namely the Mercury of the Moon, I would make of it, like my true Mercury of life, an excellent remedy against pox, scrofula & all other deplorable evils.

Another excellent precipitate of Mercury, of the composition and use of Sieur de la Violette.
Dissolve Mercury in an extraordinary strong water, made of true Hungarian vitriol, good saltpetre and these little Hungarian garnets, which are full of a Solar sulphur, pass the water three or four times over the faeces, until it becomes the color of a high hyacinth, and it is imprinted with the sulfur of the aforesaid garnets, because when you have thrown your Mercury into this water, it will attract the sulphur. Solar of the garnets, & thus you will make an excellent remedy of it, whereas otherwise it would be more harmful than beneficial. The Mercury that you want to precipitate must necessarily be either cinnabar or antimony, which you will dissolve in this strong water, until it is completely reduced to water: then you will precipitate it in fountain water,where you will have dissolved common prepared, or for better that which one draws from the colcotar, & you will see suddenly coagulating your Mercury at the bottom, pour after the clear water by inclination, & wash the curd by so many various fresh waters, that there does not remain any acridity there. Finally, boil this soft lime for the best with the brandy of coral, and then wash the whole with rose water, and when the matter is quite dry, pour over it some good spirit of wine, making it burn on the matter until dry. One can make the same white lime, or the same curd with common strong water, & precipitate it in salt water, & finally soften it & dry it. This last precipitate could be used against cancers & external ulcers,
Now, the best precipitation of Mercury must be made with the oils of common salt or nitre, or with the sourness of sulfur and vitriol, which are true mountain vinegars, the impressions of which, although joined to Mercury, are nevertheless not so harmful, nor so emetic as those of armoniacal salt, or distilled vinegar, which are erased only with difficulty although they are washed by several and various ablutions. When therefore you wish to precipitate the Mercury of cinnabar or of antimony with the aforesaid metallic oils, you will take two parts of one of these oils, with one part of Mercury, and you will put the whole in a matrass over a slow fire, until all the Mercury is dissolved and entirely reduced to water, after which you will first pour over it three or four ounces of a good prepared salt,& secondly fountain water, to coagulate your Mercury into white curds, then you will soften it as much as you can by passing it several times through cordial waters, & finally through brandy, & in this way you will make an excellent precipitated Mercury. There are some who sublimate it on prepared salt and on soft sublimate, and derive from this a very useful purgative.

Precipitate of Mercury without etching.
Take quicksilver and gold, make an amalgam in the manner of the Goldsmiths, after separating the Mercury in the leather as much as possible, and put the matter which will not have been able to pass into a matrass, which, sigilated or not, will be put in an Athanor oven, or in some time afterwards your matter will rise to the top of the glass and will gradually redden, take care not to increase the fire, lest the Mercury come. to exhale before being perfectly digested. And of this kind you will have a Mercury precipitated by means of gold, whose virtues are marvelous & in great number, the principal ones of which are those which follow.
In the first place, this powder is excellent for the cure of gouts, if you take the weight of half a drachma once a month, with two ounces of canned bugloss in the form of pills: it is also admirable against venereal ailments, because if you give 4 or 6 grains only with some can, or wine for eight days, you will completely recover from the pox.
That if when you make the amalgam, you put silver in it instead of gold, and give it with a can of betony or lemon balm, the weight of 4 grains, you will certainly cure mania, all kinds of melancholy, and even epilepsy, provided that you mix this precipitate with peony water.

Mercury precipitated red by means of gold.
Take six parts of Mercury of cinnabar or some other, one part of calcined gold, mix them and amalgamate them together and put only one and a half ounces of it in each matrass, on the continual fire of an Athanor, without being hermetically sealed, so that the humor of Mercury can be exhaled, and you will make in three weeks at the latest, the most beautiful red precipitate and the most useful to health that one can imagine.

Mercury precipitated to red by means of quicklime.
so that the Mercury is always reduced by your weight: finally take the matter, namely the lime which will be in the bottom of the retort, & dissolve it in a large bowl of water, moving with your hand & bringing out what will be lightest, as when preparing minium, & by several & various ablutions, your lime will pass all from one terrine to another, so that you will only have Mercury left in the bottom of your bowl. precipitated by the spirits of lime salt as red as poppy.

Mercury precipitated in all sorts of colors.
One can precipitate Mercury in all the colors one wishes, if when, after having dissolved it in strong water, one throws into it the things which can all together precipitate and color it: thus you will make it white like milk, if on the strong water which will have dissolved it, you throw sea salt into it: you will make it very red, if into the same water you throw urine into it: you will make it tanned red, if you pour oil or salt of tartar into it, & you will make it completely green, if you put salt in it, finally you will metamorphose it by means of various salts whose properties Philosophy teaches into all the colors you desire.

Diaphoretic precipitated mercury.
& if you want to make it marvelous for health, & even for Chemical works, you will pass tartarized brandy over it up to nine times, & until it comes out tasteless or sweet. Some for the better instead of common Mercury, take that of cinnabar which they revivify, or which they deaden by means of sulphur, and which they resurrect afterwards with brandy, and with that of tartar.

Other Diaphoretic & Fixed Precipitated Mercury.
You must well purify the quantity you want of Mercury of antimony or cinnabar, then you will precipitate it all by yourself, by putting it on the fire in a matras of good glass hermetically closed, thus cooking it gently in an Athanor, the space of 20 or 25 days, or the time it takes to precipitate it perfectly, after that dissolve it in vinegar which is distilled twice, passing new distilled vinegar over the precipitated Mercury, until until it is completely dissolved. And when you have reduced it to this state, you will put it in a glass bowl that has a flat and smooth bottom, so that it collects completely frozen in the middle, and that it throws all around itself the stinking excrement and scoria, which are not homogeneous.& your Mercury will remain frozen to you in whiteness at the bottom of the vessel: put the same oil again on this frozen Mercury, iron it & continue this until the oil has lost all its strength, which having happened you will comfort the stomach of the Ostrich with new liquor from the Green Lion, digesting it for as long as you did before, repeat this as long as the rectified Mercury becomes red as blood. That done, take this reddened Mercury and put it subtly in powder in a marras of very good glass, which is hermetically stoppered, and holding it in an Athanor on a suitable fire, the space of seven whole days, you will have a fixed Mercury, which one can call the true diaphoretic Mercury, which one can use for a very excellent remedy for several great diseases.

Mineral turbulence.
Take Mercury of cinnabar or antimony, put it in a matrass, pour on top of the oil of vitriol or sulfur which floats two or three fingers, leave the whole in the cold, until the Mercury is reduced to lime, from this lime distill into liquor by the retort or by the still, pour again on top of new oil of vitriol, then distill it, pour again new oil & redistill, do this four or five times, & you will find a yellow powder which, being well dried, you will wash very well with common water, to remove its acrimony & you will finally put some spirit of wine in it, then you will distill it, & if you want to make it more innocent & more perfect you will pour pink water into it & pass it like the spirit of wine.Thus you will have an excellent turbith whose dose is given from six to twelve grains at the most.

Other mineral turbith.
Take one ounce of rolled gold leaf, & twelve ounces of Mercury, dissolve the gold in aqua regia, & the Mercury in common aquafortis. Join the two dissolutions of which an Eclipse will be made. Distill after at high heat, & give it violent on the end as much as you can. Break your retort, pulverize the precipitated material that you find at the bottom, put it back in another retort & pass all the water you have distilled over it three or four times, push your fire to the last time, to raise all that can sublimate, & take only the bottom, which you will put in powder inside a crucible on hot coals, to chase away as much as possible the spirits of strong water. Take this powder, grind it well on the marble, and then in a glass mortar,grind it with common distilled water, & you will see a fat floating above your powder, which you will pour & keep aside, repeat this ablution with new water until there is no longer any fat floating around, & your water comes out as soft as when you put it in. This water that you will have reserved is such that if you touch the cankered and pock-pox ulcers, it will consume the dead flesh by stinging the living a little and will certainly heal them. And as for the powder which remains to you, you will have the care to wash it with the cordial waters, & to finally pass through it the theriacal water of Paracelsus, which he composes with theriac, the myrrh, the saffron & the brandy, because your powder will draw the odor from it & will become more cordial.

Another mineral turbith from an excellent Flemish Doctor.
He makes his mineral turbith by precipitating the Mercury in a good oil of vitriol or sulfur, well dephlegmated, ironing this oil two or three times over the Mercury, & to give it a greater softening, he washes it with various waters, & renders it as he pleases, sometimes purgative and sometimes sudorific. To make it purgative, he mixes it with diagrede, or else with some other cathartic, and at all he gives only the quantity of a few grains: but to make it sudorific, he fixes it by adding saltpeter which he kindles and which he washes by various ablutions, the ordinary dose of which is 18 grains, and the extraordinary of a scruple that one gives to those to whom one wishes to provoke a lot of sweats.

Mercury essencified.
but you will take care not to open the vessel until after twice twenty-four hours, because in this space, the matter will finish dissolving: the crystals will form at the neck of the retort, & you will find at the bottom of your retort an oil of the color of ashes in which you can dissolve Sun lime made according to the art, namely one part gold lime in three parts oil, after which it will dissolve. frozen in red powder in an Athanor for the space of 20 days, one gives this powder the dose of a grain and a half in wine, which purges from below & by sweats, & cures by this means of pox, dropsy, & several other diseases. & you will find at the bottom of your retort an oil of the color of ashes in which you can dissolve Sun lime made according to the art, namely one part gold lime in three parts oil, after which it will dissolve. frozen in red powder in an Athanor for the space of 20 days, one gives this powder the dose of a grain and a half in wine, which purges from below & by sweats, & cures by this means of pox, dropsy, & several other diseases. & you will find at the bottom of your retort an oil of the color of ashes in which you can dissolve Sun lime made according to the art, namely one part gold lime in three parts oil, after which it will dissolve. frozen in red powder in an Athanor for the space of 20 days, one gives this powder the dose of a grain and a half in wine, which purges from below & by sweats, & cures by this means of pox, dropsy, & several other diseases.

Mercury of life.
Take four pounds of antimony, tin and lead, half a pound each, melt the tin and the lead in a crucible, then throw the antimony into it, and when everything is hot, put in it a pound of tartar, a pound of saltpetre, pulverized, and you will make a spelter, which when cooled you will cast into cast iron and an ingot, powder this material in a retort over a sand fire, with two parts of sublimation. é, fit a large container & push after the fire, as long as nothing can come out of it. Note that at the bottom of the container there will be a little revivified antimony that you will separate to collect the Mercury of life, you only need to pour water into the container, which will whiten immediately, pour everything into a large terrine,until your flowers have gone to the bottom & the water has become clear, then pour out this water, to add more until it is tasteless, & your Mercury of life will then be done. It is prepared for the sick even better, cooking it for the space of four days in very hot sand in a hermetically sealed matrass, then it is burnt over it seven or eight times very well rectified brandy, & the dose is from two to four grains in a can, both against scrofula, as well as against pox, ulcers, worms & other diseases.

Other Mercury of life.
Make an oil of Mercury like the gum of the Mercury of life, purify it by several distillations, moreover take a drachma of gold leaf, & half an ounce of good pumice stone, put the whole in a lute crucible over a lamppost fire for 3 pm, then pulverize your material & put it in a matrass, where you will pour over seven ounces of your oil of Mercury little by little, then give fire above & below, & it will distill an oil clear & red as blood that you will precipitate ate in water & will be white yellow. This precipitate, well softened with several ablutions of water, will be put in a hermetically closed glass vessel, covered with a very good lut buried in the sand, & give fire of Athanor until the powder is colored red, give in two grains up to six with a preserve of rose,

Gentle Mercury Oil.
It is necessary to make the fixation of the armoniacal salt with the quicklime, as will be shown elsewhere in our Panacea, & to extract the salt from it by dissolving water & coagulation, & this salt to make it dissolve in the wet, which happens in a short time. To this dissolved salt, add so much sublimed Mercury as it will be able to dissolve into a paste, & put the whole thing in a clean glass, in the cellar, & the sublimed Mercury will easily dissolve in water, by means of the liquor of the armoniacal salt, if it was not well dissolved, add again some liquor of your salt, to make a real dissolution.This mixture therefore being well dissolved, you will have it purified in BM for two days, & being purified, by the same hotter bath, you will separate a phlegm from it, & you will be left with a material in the cold which will freeze in the form of ice cubes, this matter again resolves into the humid, digested & separated from its phlegm as before, & then coagulate & dissolve as long as the matter no longer coagulates, but always remains liquid by these repeated coagulations & resolutions, for it is by this means that it softens itself .But to increase its virtue, under you will cohabit with it a good spirit of wine which you will separate by the bath, and you will be left with a sweet oil of Mercury, whose properties are admirable for the cure of pox and scrofula, only two or three drops are given with some liquor. It powerfully stirs the sweats, & causes four or five bowel movements, purging the only venom & purifying the whole mass of blood,

Another excellent mild Mercury oil.
Take some gum of Mercury of life imprinted as much as possible with the fire of nature, distill it, & purify it only once: with this clear, heavy & mercurial liquor, & which in the cold coagulates into ice cubes, mix an excellent spirit of salt circulated beforehand with a good spirit of wine on its own, which you will then separate from your frozen mercurial matter, until it is completely dissolved & it no longer freezes. And when you will have brought it to this point, you will take this mixture & put it in putrefaction in the BM or in the belly of the horse for the space of 42 days which make a philosophical month, during which time you will see wonders on the colors: thus your acrid material that it was will become soft by the conjunction of the spirit of salt, & by the digestion of heat,

Mercurial water.
Take a pound of good sublimed Mercury, twelve ounces of raw antimony, grind, mix & put the whole thing together in a retort on the ashes over a heat of degrees, & you will distill a matter like milk, distill this milk separately & you will draw clear water: put this water in a still & draw out the phlegm by the bath, & you will remain at the bottom of a mineral mercury water, which dissolves all the bodies, & makes the Sol pass through the still. Instead of raw antimony use spelter & you will do better.

Other mercurial water.

Take a pound of good sublimate, a pound of sublimated armoniacal salt, mix everything together, sublimate four or five times, always put the sublimated over the faeces, & grind both together, remember to do the sublimation in a large retort, which will be joined to a large enough bottle, to receive the armoniacal salt & everything that will pass; put this matter in the damp to dissolve it, being dissolved, distill it as strong water, take after the faeces, pound them & resublimate them with a quarter of armoniac salt, put back in the damp & dissolve, then distill & join the waters that you will have in large quantity, & which are truly mercurial waters.

Another mercurial water, or Virginal Milk of the sublimated Mercury.

& let it soak up plenty of it, & that's what you have to watch out for, as the thing you're looking for the most. When you have made this sublimate in such a quintessence, you will put it in a hermetically stamped matrass in the fire of Athanor, or such that it does not exceed the heat of the Sun, to calcine it for the space of 20 days: a mercurial water or virginal milk, with which will pass the spirit of vitriol, which is a marvelous solvent.