Christophle Glaser’s Traitè de la Chimie: one Cements to purify and examine a foiled reduced gold and put it in a crucible together with royal cement consuming and reducing in residuals the other metals mixed with gold.
Alchemical operations don’t cover all laboratory transformations, often being more esoteric than practical. Understand me, I do not mean that alchemists did not operate according to chemical theories, but they rather prefer covering all under massive esotericism. Of course ultimate Alchemy goals are highly esoteric. But not their tools.
Let’s go on with my translation from Glaser original french.
Circulation of liquids in appropriate vessels with a suitable fire is performed to fix flying spirits and evaporate fixed salts. This is one of the most important chemical operations.
Coagulation is to make hard and solid bodies that were soft and liquid and that through deprivation and consummation of their moisture, as one can seen during liquids containing some salts evaporation, or when mixing spirits with corrosive fixed salts: for example the crystal or stone strong liquor mixed with water, they coagulate together into a solid mass that is united in spite of some liquid was like water.
Cohobation is the many times distillation of the same thing by settle again distilled liquor on the matter which remains on the bottom of distillation pot and distilling above to better open and volatilize bodies, or rather to fix spirits according to materials and intentions, this can be more or less repeated.
Crystallization is reducing nitre (1), salts, vitriols, and others which are first dissolved, into crystals; filter, purify, and evaporate till the thin layer covering the surface and then expose them to cold air where salts are frozen slowly, keeping some portion of water with they were dissolved into, and they appear diaphanous crystalline transparency which they lose to the minimum sun heat, which deprives them of water and makes them opaque.
Detonating and Fulminating is to sort impure and volatile sulfur from minerals while retaining their
inner and fixed sulfur: this operation is performed by means of Saltpeter by preparing antimony or others.
To Digest, is to cook things with a moderate heat closing to that of our stomach, and through this heat we cooked raw substances, sweeten bitter and harsh, separate pure from impure and extract the juice which is the best part of every body. Digestion is done in an ordinary way with addition of some convenient menstruum to the matter, it is no different from Maceration but for heat, in fact the last one is performed in cold conditions.
Dissolution is to reduce hard and compact bodies to liquids by means of solvents, as shown by the gold dissolution in aqua regia, and that one of silver, mercury and other by strong waters.
Edulcoration is purifying by means of lotions and repeated effusions, or salts and spirits impression to chemical compounds such as precipitated magisteria and others.
To Embody is to provide spirits with physical bodies, which is frequently done with acidic spirits brought by fixed salts or acidic earths: for example by putting the spirit of nitre or strong water with fixed salt Tartar, the last one is held so tightly to the first that these two will make a good Saltpeter, and when you put very strong vinegar or some acidic spirit on coral or pearls, they just get the liquor containing acidity, which acidity is fixed with these bodies.
Evaporation and Exhalation is different if the bodies to exhale are dry or to evaporate the moisturized: