Carlo Lancillotti prepares a volatile urine salt, distilling it on the Caput Mortuum, the part that doesn’t rise. So we see what a volatile salt is for.
To sublime what normally cannot sublime—a step beyond Glaser’s processes on the same urine. The Caput Mortuum, see also Antimony Glass or Caput Mortuum (1), is the residual part in a distillation. It is very unusual to be nominated in ancient iatro chemistry, which is very usual in Alchemy, namely in the preparatory works or labors of Hercules.
If volatilized salts are the king method to achieve Secret Fire/ Mercurius, and urine provides an interesting volatile salt, Lancillotti examines a ground that may reveal some utility. To read after Glaser and the Unladylike, but Volatile, Salt of Urine.
Carlo Lancillotti Nuova Guida alla Chimica, or new guide to chemistry, Venezia 1681. My translation is from Italian. You can find an introduction to Lancillotti at Extraction without Distillation:
On Urine.
“Human urine has countless strong points because it is abundant in salted and nitrous parts.”
When a chemist of Lacilotti’s period mentions the attributes “salted and nitrous” to indicate the volatility of a substance. Salts were “worked” till sublimation, and niter did not define just the nitrogen compounds since molecular purity was neither known nor wanted back them, but more than often, a substance with generic volatility was involved.
“it turns to be warm and dry; consequently, its assets are to heat, desiccate, and resist decay. Thus it is recommended to impede plaque—obstructions of the liver, and jaundice. Enema procedures solve the body, externally applied with hot grapevine ashes or in the form of a poultice above the spleen, mitigates pain, dries mange, dissolve tumors by applying wet patches, and healing infected wounds and gangrene. Washing up with an ounce or more of saltpeter and a drachm of verdigris heals joints trembling. It must be from a healthy young man who used to drink wine from 12 to 15. From these subjects preparations, I will describe these below.
Spirit of Volatile Urine.
Take your son’s urine, as above said, distill a hot bath, then pour some twice over it, some feces, and you will obtain spirit and phlegm together. A tepid bath rectifies, and if you want the volatile salt, put it in a necked flask at least two arms long and distill at very low fire, and you get the volatile urine salt around the neck, as white as snow but smelly.
Like the volatile salt, this spirit (1) is good for removing calculi and asthma in a suitable liquor; the dosage is up to a drachm or more. When applied with wet patches, it wonderfully mitigates gout pain.
Other Method by Putrefaction.
As said above, please take a good quantity of urine from children, put it in very well-closed long flasks to putrefy for 40 days, then distill in sand heat, adapting a suitable recipient to the head hose, and the distilled will pour over the feces for three times. Then take the distilled and put it in a very long-necked flask; at the mouth, place a sponge bathed in oil and then press, put a recipient to the head and carefully seal the joints, then distill a warm bath and around the head will raise the spirit of urine in crystals, which is so cleaned it will be solved in rainwater or (and) get distilled as above with sponge and the new distilled will be dissolved in new water as above distilling in the same way for six times, always with new water, in this way, you will have a very precious spirit of urine, or volatile salt, which has countless virtues.
Magisterium of Urine.
Take some putrified urine as above, separate feces, put into distilling at bath till all the phlegm is extracted, and then stop and distill in a long-necked flask what will be available to be distilled. You will have the volatile salt, and the remaining, which will not come out, put in a retort at sand heat so that you will have volatile salt again. You will have some Caput Mortuum (2) with its phlegm and extract the sal fixum (fixed) by coagulating till dryness, then mold with three parts of clay and make pellets. Let the pellets dry and then distill like the Spirit of common salt (3); put the distilled spirit droplet by droplet over the above-mentioned spirit, or volatile salt, till it doesn’t crack anymore: then put the sublimation vessel and distill and you will have a perfect salt. From six to twelve grains in suitable liquors to remove the above-mentioned diseases.
- In ancient Chemistry, a spirit is often the product of distillation, no matter the composition and the state of the matter. Often Spirit and Volatile Salt are synonymous;
- Caput Mortuum, or deadhead, is the part that does not pass through the retort or does not distill;
- Spirit of Common Salt, according to Lancillotti: “The spirit of salt is a distillation which needs some care. It requires a graduated heat. To extract the common salt, you have to take three pounds of common Bole ( see Martino Poli and Analysis of Saltpeter) reduced in pellets chickpeas size, that’s to say roughly crushed, and then remove the fine powder, and here is all the secret to proficiently extract the spirit of common salt. The melting salt pastes with powder and makes a mass in the retort bottom, which then hardly gives off any spirit, but in thicker size takes every piece separately and generally for every pound of salt, at least eight ounces of spirit, from which we have to separate the phlegm, got extracted” ;
See also Antimony Glass or Caput Mortuum? , Glaser and the Unladylike, but Volatile, Salt of Urine , Hollandus, How Urine Salts Extract a White and Red Dye and Cabala Mineralis and the She Horse on Urine Works part 1 ;