Alchemy and Remedies — Chemical Recipes

If you could reduce it to the whiteness and softness of quicksilver, it would become more fixed and firmer in every test, because it has no ash-residue.

Labor, therefore, in this: melt its filings with arsenic, and euphorbium, and calcined tartar, and with alkali salt, and with "alme de Cabanni," which in many places is called alumen Galotimum, for the reason that cats willingly sleep in it near the fire; and let it be melted quickly, and let it be wonderfully extinguished in every way in oil of tartar. And when it is melted quickly by itself without the help of any other thing, you will have the desired result; and know that it is of much value to melt it with calx of antimony, as elsewhere with quicklime, because the calx of the stone causes melting.

It is to be noted concerning the calx of Saturn, Venus, Jupiter, and Mars, that when they refuse to be calcined, they can in no way be reduced into a body, nor be diminished by the philosophers, nor be varied by the philosophers from color to color, and let it be a most sharp calx.

However, let their salts be made so that coagulation occurs most often by the sun alone under dung, so that it may come to pass, because the oil then will not fix Mercury; and that Mercury will fix another Mercury even unto infinity.

It is to be noted that if you join Note.

Mercury to the salts of metals by sublimation and sal ammoniac, and finally under dung coagulation occurs in the sun so that it may come to pass, because the oil then will not fix Mercury; and that Mercury will fix another Mercury even unto infinity. It is nothing.

It is to be noted that if you join Mercury to the salts of metals by sublimation and sal ammoniac, and then dissolve it under dung and congeal it in the sun, and you reiterate the solution and coagulation many times, then when you wish, you will congeal crude Mercury, well washed; and this you will be able to multiply unto infinity.

Therefore, draw out the Salt of the Metals with sweet and distilled water, such as with aqua vitae, and through boiling congeal it in the sun. And again, by itself, dissolve it under dung into water, and distill and congeal it clearly. For one part of this tints 100 parts of Luna or Saturn perfectly.

Likewise, one part of it fixes two parts of washed Mercury, and any part of it tints 100 parts.

Some say that salt extracted from a metal must be calcined again.

Likewise, note that salt is better extracted from calcined bodies with distilled urine, previously boiled and skimmed.