on the head by the addition of Cephalick Simples which it doth salificate that is makes their otherwise clammy tinctures to become faline and to christallize and so by addition of any other simple Concretes different specificated Salts may be had as many and as diverse as there are sorts of Concretes to be gotten or procured But these preparations though much nobler then the Galenical Conserves or Syrups or Candied things which are done with Sugar are yet inferiour to those preparations which are made by Elixeration of Tartar with essential Oiles and Spiritualized Tinctures or brought into a Samech with pure rectified Spirit of Wine For by means of these the Salt is made not only volatile and sweet and so it becomes inoffensively abstersive and penetrative but it is also endowed with balsamick and aromatick qualities and so doth not salificate only the Tinctures ☜ that are prepared with it but also spiritualizeth them for in the Salt which is made by acid Spirits and an Alcalie although Tinctures by it are cristallized made Salt yet are they not so spiritualized as to be free from future Empyrheumes as in these other preparations they are So Sugar is cristallized and reiterately refined yet will it burne and be turned into heterogeneities foul filthie and stinking by the fire T is true that Alcalies by Acid Spirits if they being satiated are after distilled by cohobation are volatized but this Spirit which is thus gotten is acid as other Spirits distilled with a strong fire are although it be very penetrative and dissolving mettals and being by them turned into a volatile coagulated Salt be of a most admirable virtue and efficacie in Medicine yet the Salt when it is barely satiated and not distilled hath only the abstersive and medicinal intentions of the Alcaly and spirit of Nitre or Vitriol c. which is less noble than the other by many degrees so that as to application unto Vegetals that which is made by elixerated Oiles or a pure vinous spirit which is wholly Sulphur volatile is far more noble efficacious and penetrative for a medicinal use than the other the reason is evident in that they have a neerer relation to them which are this way prepared than they which are made of mineral Spirits which are as remote from Vegetables in their nature as the subjects out of which they were drawn by the operation of the fire But Alcalies and Oils essential and burning spirits are radically of kin each to other and so the Alcaly by them recovers what it lost by burning that is a seminal vital essential Balsom and so becomes not only volatile but fermental and exceeding sociable to our Nature and so an admirable mean of preparing advancing noble Vegetals those especially which are odorous balsamick and aethereal And here I shall before I pass answer two objections which captious Spirits may make the one opposing my Doctrine to noble Helmont the other opposing me to my self For the first they will object Helmonts Doctrine That volatile Spirits as of Wine Vinegar c. are fixed by means of fixt Salts whereas I affirme That the Salts by their Spirits are volatized To which I shall answer That both are true for the spirit is upon the Alcali robd of its saline parts rejecting the residue in forme of an insipid aquous flegme Thus is the Spirit as to the Saline part of it fixed in respect of what it was yet not so fixed but that by fire it will be made to distill over into a Recipient which a fixt Alcaly alone would never doe so that the Alcaly is made more Volatile and the Spirit more fixt than before And therefore Helmont speaking of this operation in his Tractate concerning the Duelech saith That a Spirit acting on a Body in a Corrosive way is in a manner fixed quodammodo fixatur being so fixed that it will abide a great heat to what it would before thus Spirit of Wine which was extremely Volatile so as to flie with the least heat becomes as to its Saline part so fixt that it will not flie but in a heat equal to the Distillation of Aqua Fortis which may and not unworthily be called a Fixation But besides there is a great mysterie in these Operations which will be more conveniently touched in the answer to the other objection which I shall therefore make that in the answer to it full satisfaction may be given to an Ingenuous Reader The Objection then is of such who would oppose me to my self First in that I say that the Spirit of Volatile Alcalies is not Acid but contradistinct to Aciditie whereas in another place I affirme of a Volatile Spirit of Tartar that it is Acid as all Spirits drawn by the fire are And Secondly That in my first Tractate intituled Natures Explication c. I writing of Alcalies Elixerated by Oiles Essential affirmed them to be the most slow for Virtue and Efficacie of all Preparations by which Alcalies are volatized whereas in this Tractate I affirme That Alcalies by Elixeration with Oiles or by reduction to a Samech by rectified Spirits are the most noble as to Vegetal preparations To which Objection in both parts of it I answer as I did to the former that both are very true only it behoves the careful Reader to consider in what respect the one and the other may be affirmed To answer then the last part of the Objection first I say still that Salt of Tartar if elixerated with an essential Oil becomes a very noble Medicament but as to its virtue as an active dissolving menstrue it is of all other the most sluggish according to Helmonts most true observation Ex salibus illa languidiora reperi quae sequebantur Sulphurum prosapiam So Spirit of Wine is nothing so dissolving a menstrue as Spirit of Vineger especially for mettalline Bodies but nothing comparable to Aqua fortis Spirit of Nitre Oil of Vitriol or the like It is one thing to be a menstrue for mettalline bodies and a far different thing to be a noble medium to volatize and exalt vegetal Tinctures which want a fermental exaltation of their Natures much more than a Corrosive sharpness to open their bodies each then are of use in their own way and kind But besides The question is concerning Alcalies edulcorated and made volatile not actually volatized and here we must yeeld the Garland to elixerated Salts especially to such which are exalted into a Samech for they have their seminal Balsamick Virtue restored to them of which the other are deprived by burning of the fire and not restored by addition of acid Corrosive Spirits which wanting it themselves cannot give what they have not These then meeting with Vegetal Tinctures become Fermental each to other and advance each other into a true essential Balsom which is of wonderful Virtue Now as concerning the aciditie of some Alcalizate Spirits and the non aciditie of others the difference therein lies in the
the white may be reduced into a white Mercurial Bodie after the dissolving liquour is separated from the same This is the highest preparation of Gold that can be made by means of this Liquour being its fift Essence and is of power to cure the most deplorable diseases to which the nature of Man is subject But the magistery of Gold which is the first preparation of it by means of this Liquour is a most eminent Medicine against all Malignant Fevers the Pestilence Palsies Plagues c. Most excellent also is the fift essence of Silver and Silver potable made by the same way and process but the sweet Oil of Venus doth exceed in Virtue both the one and the other and is thus made Calcine good Vitriol till it be thoroughly wasted what will wast then dulcifie the Colchotar with pure Water and drie it to this dried put an equal part of this Liquour for it will be dissolved easily and speedily distill off your liquour and pour it back again and thus cohobate it at the least twelve or fifteen times so vvill all the Bodie of the Colchotar be brought over the Helme in form of a green liquour digest this fame in a gentle heat of a Bath for about a month and then distill it in a slow fire so will the whole Metalline substance of the Venus come over leaving the Liquour below in the bottome of the Retort in its intite pondus and Virtue To this Liquour or Spirit put an equal quantitie of 🜹 dissolved in as much water as will dissolve it so shall you separate the green Liquour from a white sediment which white sediment will give white mettal as fixed as Silver and which will abide the test of ♄ but yet formally distinct from Silver which thou if a Philosopher shalt easily perceive however as good to a Metallurgist as the best Silver the green Liquour drie up in a viol glass by evaporating all the moisture for it is the Sulphur of the ♀ mixed with the 🜹 by which note that it is fixed so that it will abide all Fire this Sulphur extract with the most pure Spirit of Wine which will dissolve it leaving the 🜹 distil away then from it thus dissolved your Spirit of Wine and you have left a very fragrant green Oil of ♀ which is its Sulphur essensificated by these operations as sweet to tast as the best Honie then which Nature hath not a more soverain remedie for most not to say all diseases This is the true Nepenthe of Philosophers causing certain Rest and asswaging all pains but ever after sleep leaving the pattie either sensibly amended in more violent and diuturnal diseases or quite well in less rigid maladies Of this subject I can write more experimentally and upon ☿ as also on Sulphur and ♠as being of no great value though when prepared of most transcendent virtues I shall be able when I make this Liquour again to give a larger discourse of it being unwilling to be a relatour of what I have on trust from others but what I in truth know my self So much I have seen as convinceth me both of the existencie and of the utilitie of this Liquour nor doe I conceive it so long or so tedious in making of which I purpose to satisfie my self God permitting shortly for if it were so tedious to make and casual in making neither Helmont nor Paracelsus could try so many experiments with it Sure I am that what I made and was the result of many years tryals off and on but of nigh two years almost daily I am sure weekly search though I was choice of it yet my care notwithstanding my glass once in distilling broke and my skill was at an end as to practise but during the time it was in my custody it was not idle night nor day For Magisteries I made many but was mostly unhappy in Quintessences partly because I was hastie and would have things done faster then Nature allowed at last being about to perfect my Sulphur of Venus as I described I broke my glass and lost both one and other being both Volatile But it is safer to make Magisteries that is to dissolve the Metalline Calxes and then draw away the Liquour and if you please to repeat this three or four times in hard Mettals then have you the Mettal or Mineral left like a sweet Salt of a fragrant sent potable in any Liquour and which will yeeld its tincture if dissolved in pure Spirit of Wine However if you have sure furnaces that will give heat to your mind then proceed on not only to the making mettals potable but also volatile separate then the Central ☿ from the Tincture which is the Oil or Sulphur and fix this as is taught concerning the Sulphur of Venus and so you have medicines which will effect whatever can be desired by either Patient or Doctour I should easily here if I should follow the dictate of my Genius run out into a large Volume but I should then prejudice and lame a Treatise which is concerning this Liquour in Latine which was chiefly written while my Trials were in the very working and which I purpose shall ere long see the light in which Reader if thou canst but attain the Liquor thou maist abundantly be instructed how to use it and so I shall end this discourse and come to the last thing on this subject promised by me and I presume expected by thee and that is to declare the matter of it and its manner of making CAP. XIII Of the matter out of which this Liquour is made and its manner of making THis Secret so efficacious and so wonderful as it it is of unspeakable use when found so it hath found in the World many who have attempted the attainment of the same not without good reason since being attained it abundantly recompenseth the pains cost laid out upon it in its virtue use But as it is in all things which are sought in the universe so is it in this there is no endeavour profitable unless the search be made first In debita materia and nextly Per debita media It is not every new thing nor yet every strange thing that is or may be made that will when produced prove to be this Liquour No verily let the Artist work his pleasure yet will not Nature transgress her own known rules to make what the Operatour in his Idle Phantasie shall expect but that onely to which she is bound by the Law of the Creatour Now from this mastery We shall exclude first all mettalls and metalline Bodies for first as to the Central ☿ of them as it is a peerless Creature so it is commiscible with nothing in the World but is a single indestructible Ens which being a real ☿ will not wet any thing but that which is Homogeneous to it self that is ☿ al and so is not the Liquour of it self nor can be by any Art mixed with ought else
its flegm in the first place this vvhen it hath dissolved any vegetable concrete and made it volatile vvill suffer the same by a gentle heat of Baineum Mariae to be all separated from it self and to ascend in its various colours leaving this dissolving Liquour in the bottome of the Cucurbit no vvhit vveakned in virtue nor diminished in quantity Thus is it an immortal Ens that is vvhose virtue is not exantlated by reiterated acting upon concretes but retaining its vigour unaltered it is of povver to resolve bodies perpetually being subject to Casualty but not to mutability saue onely by its compeer and is therefore vvorthily esteemed by those vvho knovv it as an unparalelled mysterie CAP. XII Of the Medicines which are preparable by this Liquour c. FRom vvhat hath been discovered concerning this Liquours vvonderful Nature it may easily be imagined vvhat a Key this is into Physick and Philosophie to such as are masters of the same I need not to illustrate this urge the admirable medicinal virtue that is in Metals and Mineral Bodies in Jems Pearls and Animal and Vegetable stones for it doth resolve also Vegetals into their first liquid matter distinguishing in them all their heterogeneities by several colours and distinct places one above another in vvhich resolution there alvvaies seats it self in a distinct place a small Liquour eminently distinguishable from the rest in Colour in vvhich the Crasis of the vvhole Herb tree or seed doth reside In vvhich retrogradation of the Concrete by this vvay of dissolution there is no loss of virtue but an exalting of the same by many degrees only vvhatever virulencie is in the Crude concrete by this operation is vvholly extinct vvith a preservation notvvithstanding of all specifick virtues apparent in the Concrete in its simplicitie These preparations I doubt not but you vvill in your mind highly commend and vvish vvith your self that you could make the like and to say Truth they are eminent and very desirable but Velle suum cuique est nec voto vivitur uno If you vvish the thing and be vvise vvish also the means of attaining it and that is vvith industrie set about it so shal you be able to resolve al Herbs into their principles liquid vvithout sediment of vvhich part vvill be unctuous and fat especially in Trees Gums Seeds and many Roots and part aqueous in vvhich the volatile Salt of the Concrete vvill appear to the tast the Liquour vvith its ovvn Oil you may circulate into an essential Salt vvhich is indeed the first Ens of the Concrete but if you vvould have things done in a lesser time make your dissolutions in a stronger heat and distil over your Liquour vvith the dissolved Bodie in a due fire so vvill the Oiliness be vvholly turned into a saline Spirit vvhich in a distillation by Bath vvill come over in various Colours the Crasis separating it self from the Flegme both by colour tast and smell as also by its time of coming over the Helme distinguishable and your Liquour left behind at bottom as much in quantity and as effectual in virtue as before Thus out of Hellebore may be made a noble specifick against the Gout the Hypocondriack melancholly Calentures and Delitias in Fevers out of Colocynthida an excellent Febrifuge and out of Myrrh Aloes and Saffron an excellent Antihectical medicine as also against Lypothymy's Deliquia's Convulsions Palsies c. In a vvord get this Liquour and the most rich excellencie of vegetables shall be at your command Of vvhich Helmont commends the first Ens of the Cedar for long life and next to it the Elixir proprietatis provided it be prepared by dissolution in a gentle heat like to the heat of the Sun in the Spring and after that digested in a like heat till the Oil and Water be united into an essential Salt I should advise all Vegetables to be prepared in the like Nature if you desire to have their eminent Virtue vvithout losing those peculiar excellencies vvhich depend on the vita ultima of the Concrete othervvise a speedier preparation makes the Medicine no less effectual for curing diseases though less povverful as to long life Yet although the blessing of long life may be found in the vegetable familie by means of this Liquour in vvhich respect these concretes deserve an high estimation yet is there nothing comparably of such medicinal efficacie in these preparations as is in metalline extracts vvhich perform that in cure vvhich to all vegetable means is impossible Of these I purpose to speak but briefly reserving a more thorough discoverie of them to better times for to deal ingenuously I have travelled in these searches as Israel did to the promised land through a Wilderness of Difficulties straits and crosses all caused through Gods permission by the malice of Sathan and the envie of unreasonable men insomuch that from the first time that I was so happy as to see my labour in these searches crowned with success to this very day I never had conveniency of reiterating these operations but have lived contented that if ever God pleased to make me so happy as to be this way serviceable to mankind he would grant me opportunitie which hitherto I have wanted and at present injoy not if otherwise blessed be his name who having bestowed on me talents and finding me unworthie hath made me unserviceable to others and unprofitable to my self In this Liquour many things I have seen many things I know by Analogy and am confirmed of them by what I have read and meditated and it may suffice any ingenuous man that what I write I know to be true by experimental ocular demonstration then which no testimony on earth can be more certain Come we then from the Vegetable to the mineral kingdom in which our Liquour doth approve it self and may justly be esteemed the Phisitians crown and the Philosophers Diadem by means of which all diseases though never so deplorable may be overcome and cut down as hay or weeds with a Sith in the hand of a Mower And here we might take a survey of what it effects on mettals then on minerals and lastly on Salts Stones Pearls Corals c. All which we could represent as in a smal map or Landskip but that we are unwilling to have this small Treatise swell into a voluminous bulk The King of mettals Gold of Nature most fixed that endures without the least diminution the most exquisite trials of Vulcan yet if Calcined into fine Atomes or laminated into thin leaves it be put into this Liquour and digested in a glass well closed in a heat such as is the heat of a boiling Bath in a few daies the Gold will be dissolved in the Liquour without any sediment the Liquor then being distilled from it leaves it in the form of a Salt fusible which cohobated often with the same Liquour is made volatile and comes over in two Colours white and red the red is the Hematine Tincture and
give that studie therefore and take pains and together with prayer to God join constant labour in the Fire thus with Gods blessing will you find what I by the same means have found CAP. III. Of volatile Salts of Herbes and their Virtue HAving run through the Discoverie of Alcalies fo far as to give a short view of their virtue in reference to minerall dissolutions let us now come to discover their use and serviceableness in application to Vegetables their Preparation Correction Purification and Exaltation in Virtue For Vegetables are of most admirable and excellent efficacie although subordinate to Minerals yet so noble in virtue that Paracelsus glories and not in vain of most excellent and several cures performable by one Herb duely prepared as to instance in Wormwood by which he affirmes That he knows perfectly to cure many and those deplorable Diseases O the Care and love of the Almighty for poor mortal man but fie upon the pride and Arrogancie of our Lordlike Doctours who like Tantalus are pined for thirst in the midst of a River and tormented with hunger yet having so many goodly Apples readie to bob them on the Nose but let not their Pride and Sloath seduce any Son of Art to choose with them their wretched lazie and unconscionable life which makes them a by word to every Porter which they are not at all moved at so long as they can get monie although with the ruine of families and lives Of this preparation of Herbs the noble Helmont speaketh in his â—harmacapolium and dispensatorium modernum where he gives counsel by way of Legacie to such who have not tasted the Virtue of the Circulatum majus that is the Alchahest how they should prepare simples which are of great virtue not by Castrating of them or clogging them with other simples by beating all up together into a Miscellanie nor yet by bare decoction by which the Virtue of Odoriferous Vegetals is diminished and the gummositie of others liquified which hath the same defects with the Crude Herbes But by superaddition of a Ferment for the extraction of the hidden Virtue by suspending their Virulencie by substitution of one qualitie for another or by composition of due ingredients stirring up new qualities such as were not in the Concretes simplicitie Which Counsel if well attended and followed it would in short time ruine those Shambles of Butcherie unto thousands of poor mortals the Apothecaries shops which have been more fatal unto mankind than ever was the sword by means of which multitudes have died through the absolute virulencie of their medicines so called but real poison not corrected but Ironically and many more for want of due help which in their Slops is not to be found To correct them is impossible they have grown up so long a time that they seem to have made prescription upon Nature for their future settlement I shall not therefore wash a Blackmore in labouring to reclaim them but instruct the ingenuous and industrious in better preparations For the virulencie of some Simples cannot be corrected nor the defects as crudities c. of others taken away by beating into powders which they call species when mingled nor boiling with Sugar into Tablets nor by Candying or Conserving with Sugar or Honey but by bringing into a volatile sacharine essentiall Salt not sacharine in tast but so called from its resemblance of Sugar-Candie which is done by the superinduction of a ferment this may be attained First then let the industrious Artist know that by means of the fixt Salt of any Herb any volatile Oil may be transmuted together with the Alcali into a volatile essentiall Salt which is of a wonderful penetrative virtue for being saline it mixeth with the urinary principles and passeth along with the Vrine and Excrements resolving by the way al that it finds to adhere obstinately to the Vessels in the waies through which it passeth and being Balsamicall by reason of the â—ils which are salificated in it it reacheth as far as any medicine of what Virtue soever Moreover being of Vegetall and not of Minerall principalls it insinuates it self even into the constitutive principles of our Body and reacheth the fountain of Animal Life which is denied to any Apothecaries Drugges For whatever reacheth to the Balsame of Life must be Salt since Bloud the seat thereof is saline the Vrine also which is an Excrement separated from the Bloud is likewise saline so is our sweat and so the very tears of the eyes nor can any thing be admitted beyond the limits of the first digestion but it must be of this Nature All Herbs the refore and Vegetables in the Stomach are either digested or not if digested they loose what they were being made chile and so become altogether of a new Nature by this formal transmutation by vvhich if they were before medicinal they are spoiled of all that virtue before they come to be admitted to the second and if they may retain a few qualities of the Magnum oportet yet these are too feeble to extirpate a disease setled in any Vessel of the second much less of the third digestion But if what is taken in be not digested it is then cast out at the draught if by reason of its gummousness or indigestableness it will not yeeld to be macerated by the ferment of the Stomach or if it have a mixed virulencie it is rejected either by vomit if the Venome be violent and apparent or by siege if the venome be gummous and not so easily found and a little more gentle or both waies if the Venome be of a gummous and very fermental virtue these never cure but by accident as I fully discovered in my Natures Explication c. and shal not therefore here repeat Vain therefore is the intention of cure that is pretended by these waies and absurd are those Idle promises of Syrups to reach and to heal the Lungs when as the Liver that is much neerer canot be reached either by Syrups or Decoctions what ever the Galenists perswade their deluded Patients But Salts being of another Nature suffer not in a digestible way by the ferment of the Stomach but retaining their virtue passe on to the Mesenterial and Mesaraick veins and so resolve in their passage whatever preternatural they find and so become abstersive diuretick and diaphoretick This is manifest in Sea-salt which passing the digestion of the Stomach and of the Duodenum is received into the Mesaraick veins and goeth along with the semidigested bloud or cruor until the urinary separation in which it lies formally the same as it was when it was taken in and is from thence separated in its intire substance form and virtue But Alcalies in the Stomach are satiated as to the lixiviate qualities with the aciditie of the Stomach and produce a neuter neither acid nor lixiviate but saline of another nature and so pass on to the urinary digestion where they become urinous but increase a fixt