Page 293. Notes: This salt is nothing more than a Saltpeter deprived of its volatile part by sulfur; it is called Polichreste from the Greek word
that’s to say the servant of various uses (usage and dosage in the original page. Being not the main topic of this site I decided to omit medical usages and dosages in the pages 294-295).
Page 295. Salt of Sulphur: Put four ounces of prepared salt Polichreste, as we have said, into a glass horn and pour over a pound of distilled urine and two ounces of the spirit of sulfur: place your horn over sand and after having fit a container, distill at the low fire all your humidity. Cohobate for two times the distilled liquor and take care, at the end of the last cohobation, to not increase fire in fear of getting a too weak acid; but as soon as the droplets will cease, and only a white mass, there will be inside the horn, one must remove the fire and let cool down the platters.
Free from the distilled liquor, since it is useless and has broken the horn, you get to powder the mass of salt inside and keep it close in a phial. It is a very agreeable salt with a half drachm (usage and dosage in the original page)
Notes. Page 297: This salt is improperly called Salt of sulfur but is just a Salt Polichreste impregnated with acid spirit.
One has to cohobate the liquor to open this salt and improve the acid penetration. It is suitable for the third and continuing fevers ( usage and dosage in the original page).
Spirit of Nitre: Powder and exactly mix two pounds of refined Saltpeter with six pounds of dried clay. Put this mixture into either a sizeable earthen horn or a glass one closed with a lute, and place it in a closed reverberation oven, fit a large ball or container, and apply a very little fire under for about four or five hours to let out all the phlegm which is to distill drop by drop.
Page 298: As soon as you see nothing coming out, discharge all the useless remainings inside the container, and having fitted again, one must close all joints with the lute and increase fire little by little till second degree comes out some spirits which will fill the ball with white clouds, so go on with the fire for two hours at the same degree, then increase it till the last violence, and when vapors turning red, push the fire to the maximum till there is nothing more coming out. The whole operation will last fourteen hours. The vessels having cooled down, unstick open all the lutes and pour your Spirit of Nitre into an earthen bottle which you will close with wax.
Page 299: Spirit of Nitre is helpful to dissolve metals, this is the best among all the Strong Water, and the corrosive virtue of the other waters of this nature mainly comes from Nitre which is in their composition.
The sweetened Spirit of Nitre is made by mixing Spirit of Nitre and rectified wine in equal parts and circling in a joining vessel over a warm table for about three days. It is suitable for colitis (usage and dosage in the original page).”
The spirits prepared by Lemery lead not only to chemical acids as an outcome since their preparation has something of “alchemical” instead. Read my previous posts on Lemery’s processes from other spirits to salts volatilization (2). Of course, in the case of Saltpeter, the French apothecary’s experiences are not so evident and apparent. Anyway, pay attention to the alchemical side of those processes. But let’s go on.
“Notes: One has to mix greasy earth or some bole with niter, for the same reason we have already said in the distillation of common salt ( you can find the link in footnote number two).
Page 300: I discharge the phlegm since it does nothing but weaken the spirit. The white vapors come from the volatile parts of Saltpeter and keep the spirit weaker, while the red vapors come from the fixed part and fortify the spirit: this is because, towards the end, the fire is pushed to the extreme. This fixed Spirit is commonly called the “ Blood of Salamander”.
Even laypersons could have randomly heard about this word, salamander, in Alchemy. Here Lemery points at redness as a synonym for fixity and whiteness of volatility. As in Alchemy. But in Alchemy, red comes after white differently than consequently to a big fire (3). Concerning the recurring presence of a symbolical salamander in many instances when Saltpeter is involved, Lemery doesn’t want to point it out excessively. But it remains the fact of a salamander, a little animal that was alleged to survive big fires.
“When Saltpeter is refined, there is only earth inside the horn. I (Lemery) have got this earth remaining after the distillation of Spirit of Nitre and have it boiled several times carefully in the water, and having let evaporate the filtered decoction; I haven’t found any salt in the bottom.
I have also observed that of two pounds of refined niter, one pound and fourteen ounces of liquor are extracted in phlegm or spirit. A third of the operation’s horn must remain empty, and the ball is very large; otherwise, these spirits impetuously coming out would break the whole to take its place.
Page 301: The sweetened spirit of wine serves fine the spirit of niter, since being sulfur it ties and encompasses the acid points, in a way these one become unable to impinge.”
Footnote 2 helps make this sentence intelligible.
“Strong Water: Powder and mix three pounds of purified and dried Saltpeter, together with one pound and a half of Vitriol calcinated to white, as we explain here: Put this mixture in an earthen or glass horn closed with a lute, whose a third is to be kept empty, place your horn into a closed reverberation oven and fit a ball as a container.
Page 302: Joints must be exactly luted. Start giving a little fire to heat the horn and then increase little by little, but as soon as you see the spirits coming out in red clouds in the container, go on for fifteen or sixteen hours at the same degree, then push to the utmost violence, till the apparition of white vapors in the place of the red ones. Then Let cool down the vessels and unstick the luting; you will find in the container your Strong Water, which has to be kept in a well-closed earthen bottle: this is to dissolve metals.
Notes: I got the Vitriol Calcinated to white to remove an insipid humidity which could only weaken it.
The strong water’s utmost virtue of corrosion comes from Nitre since Vitriol cannot but provide just too much weaker Spirits. I admit that the oil of Vitriol has a lot of corrosive virtue, but eighteen or twenty hours of fire are not enough to let it out since it can be released at least after thirty hours of distillation. The Vitriol is used uniquely to improve Saltpeter and employ fire to get rarefied in Spirit.
We must note that if the matter should experience the fire for five days and nights, the ball would always be congested with clouds because Vitriol gives off Spirits all along this time.
Sometimes one can also add some Alum and Arsenic to the Strong Water mixture, but the composition we have given is better. A red mass remains inside the horn, which one can use, like Colcothar, as an astringent.
Page 304. Fixation of Saltpeter in Salt Alkali: Make the Saltpeter melt in a strong crucible above red hot coals, throw on a spoonful of rough powdery coal; it will produce a big flame together with a detonation, which you will apply again as much as before, and that’s till the matter will no more flame but remains fixed at the crucible bottom. Then throw it in a well-heated mortar, and once cooled down, put it in powdery form and make it melt in a suitable volume of water. Filter the dissolution through grey paper and evaporate all the humidity in an earthen basin or a glass vessel on sand heat. A white salt will remain, which must be kept inside a well-closed phial.
This salt tastes like Tartar Salt, and it is not so different in medical virtues: it opens all the obstructions through urine ( dosage in the original page). It is also helpful to extract the tincture of senna. One can also extract a Red Tincture through the Spirit of Wine, like Tartar Salt. If placed in a cellar, it gets dissolved again in a liquor simile to the oil of Tartar. It is used to extract the Tincture of Vegetables and Minerals.”
Tartar Salt is not so foreign to the alchemical proceedings to achieve Alkahest (4). And Spirit of Wine is ubiquitous in ancient chemistry and Alchemy. And Tincture is a term not confined to the apothecary (5).
“Notes: Saltpeter in this operation is valuable because of its volatile parts, to flame the coal, to raise with impetuosity, to get a detonation, since, as we have already said, Saltpeter never flames if not joined with another matter sulfur-like, And coal, as we know, is filled with the oily part.
The detonation will go on till all the Saltpeter volatile parts are exhaled; at that point, the coal is not pushed to move; it rests without raising.
This salt is dissolved in water; then, the dissolution is filtered to separate what is terrestrial. When the humidity is over, it remains a Salt Alkali because the salt of coal, which is an Alkali, is strictly mixed inside the parts of Saltpeter (6).
- See also Thesaurus Hermeticum & the Pythagorean River;
- See also Lemery and the Spirits of Salt Armoniac and Lemery & the Spirits of Common Salt with Wine and Aqua Regia and Fulminating Gold According to Lemery ;
- See also Kamala Jnana, Introduction to a Live Secret and Hortulus Hermeticus, Beware of the Red Laton ;
- See Starkey Pyrotechnie & Volatilization of Alkalis 2 and Baro Urbigerus & the Circulatum Tree ;
- See Guido Montanor & Latin Verb Tingo-Tinxi ;
- See also Martino Poli & the Analysis of Saltpeter ;