Everyone now sees the trouble he had before: much spirit of wine evaporated through such cohobations, and along with the tiresome labour he suffered great loss. When spirit of wine comes to alkali and is driven by fire, its quantity flies away again, leaving its phlegm with the alkali. The spirit is thereby concentrated and becomes sharper and fierier through losing phlegm; this is then supposed to be called alkalized and rooted spirit of wine. They do the same with vinegar, as I shall explain afterward. Chymists, seek an intermediate thing and place it as a medium between alkali and volatile, between two extremes. Let the alkali drink its fill of this until it can take no more, so full of the medium that it staggers like a drunken peasant. Once the alkali is so full of acid, let it drink enough volatile to become fuller still; the more volatile, the better. Then drive it forcefully through fire: the alkali flies upward with all its parts. Add again its own weight, or twice its weight, of its volatile, and quickly drive it over by the force of fire. Acid and alkali have thus become a volatile, a rooted and alkalized volatile.

To make myself properly understood, I shall reveal it for everyone’s benefit. Understand once more that every sublunary subject, each according to its kind in the animal, vegetable and mineral kingdoms, has its own volatile: a subtle, volatile water, whether little or much. Each likewise has an acid or vinegar that passes over after the volatile phlegm: a vinegary-sour spirit, smelling in each kingdom of its own kingdom. Each also has its alkali, leached with water from the residue after reverberation. If a chymist wishes to obtain and make a rooted volatile or acid, let him take each individual’s own principles, or, where one or another is lacking, homogeneous substitutes. Put 1 part pure alkali into a retort and pour over it 3 parts of its own acid. Distil slowly in ashes or a water bath. The acid passes over entirely weak, like phlegm, even if it had been as sharp as aqua fortis, because the alkali has retained and fixed the sharpness within itself. Having done this, pour on another 3 parts of its own acid and proceed as before. It passes over weakly, and the alkali will already be fairly full and satisfied. A third time pour on 3 parts fresh acid as before; the more, the better. Draw it off by degrees in a water bath until an oil remains. The alkali stands dissolved: it is the drunken, staggering peasant. Continue adding acid until the acid passes over as sharp as when poured on. If the acid is sharp and concentrated free of all phlegm, this often happens on the second, third or fourth occasion.

Once alkali is united with acid and stands like an oil, the two principles are together. A chymist sees how one principle most gently grasps and holds the other, itself driving out what is heterogeneous to it: volatile moisture or phlegm. If you now wish to make a rooted volatile from it, proceed as follows. It is already a rooted acid; nothing more is needed than to add another 6 parts fresh acid and drive it over with this through a retort into a liquor by a few cohobations. It is then rooted vinegar or acid. To make a rooted volatile from it, mix in 6 parts volatile and drive them over together. They unite most amicably, without noise or any discord. Once this has passed over, add fresh, most highly rectified volatile, and drive it over too. Repeat this three times. The volatile is then rooted according to nature’s own rule and may rightly be called nature’s quintessence or magistery. All principles are together in one: the upper and lower are united with the middle. In accordance with Hermes it can therefore be called “united power,” because here the upper has been drawn together with the lower.

Some take 1 part of this alkali impregnated with distilled vinegar and add 4 parts calcined flint. They mix it well and drive it over in a glass retort, first applying gentle fire for two hours, then increasing it until flame strikes around the retort. They maintain this until the salt of tartar has passed over with the spirit of wine vinegar in the form of a mist or spirit. A chymist sees here how the saying becomes true: nature delights in nature; nature embraces nature; nature conquers and overcomes nature. If the practitioner took less acid and proportions of the principles contrary to this process, so that the fixed or alkali predominated, he would make a fixed salt or crystal, flowing in fire like butter, into a quintessence commonly termed fixed, just as the other quintessence is liquid and volatile. He can thus work backward and forward as he wishes, transforming one into the other. For the practical separation and reunion of principles from all individuals, or the transformation of one into the other, see the Treatise on the Anatomy of Things, here in Part Two.

Next comes the ordinary way of rooting vinegar. Take 4 pounds salt of tartar, pour 1 pound vinegar over it and draw it off again: then it is ready. Now examine this vinegar. Simply distilled vinegar is not sharp to begin with; whatever sharpness it has, salt of tartar retains and fixes within itself. Mere phlegm therefore passes over instead of truly sharpened, rooted vinegar. Even if they distil vinegar off salt of tartar ten times, it grows ever weaker and less: the labour is empty. Salt of tartar, conversely, retains the vinegar’s sharpness and becomes a flowing salt that readily melts at a candle. What extractions they make with it they will discover for themselves. The same happens when they draw vinegar off sal ammoniac: the vinegar passes over in its former weakness, leaving sal ammoniac behind without diminishing it. In these errors they cannot help themselves by considering a medium, and consequently the operation fails. Philosophy and the art are mocked and disgraced, denounced as false and fabricated.

Most distil in a flask through an alembic. Only the subtlest volatile vinegar passes over, together with phlegm. Some use this for every operation, although it proves as weak as phlegm, retaining only a slight taste that merely attests that it came from vinegar. If they drive more strongly, through a retort, they obtain a stronger product, but one stinking and empyreumatic from the oil. They either reject it entirely or must remove its stench through repeated rectification. Removing the vinegar’s stench also removes its sharpness; then it is useless again. To give such people an advantage and enable them to distil a truly sharp vinegar for their operations, I shall show them several useful devices. From these one will devise ever better and shorter manipulations. The noblest manipulations, by which such vinegar can be distilled sharp and clear at once, pleasantly smelling according to its kind and without a burnt character in a single distillation, are not public property and do not belong in public. This is called God’s gift, Pandora, by which the whole art is opened. Yet good guidance can be given through examples, from which an ingenious person will soon learn to help himself.

Therefore, to distil a very strong vinegar without a burnt character, take a subject that retains the vinegar’s stinking oil and lets nothing pass but the sharpness with the phlegm. The vinegar then passes over at once, clear and unburnt. Many measures can be obtained at once, where previously scarcely a quarter as much could be obtained, and that with great difficulty. Many subjects retain the oil: quicklime, the dead head of aqua fortis, colcothar, vitriol, minium and wood ashes. Take whichever of these you wish, though some are better than others; experience will teach you. Take 1 pound of it and 1 or 2 measures of strong wine vinegar. Put the powdered addition into a large retort proportioned to it, pour the vinegar over it, and place it in sand or ashes. Distil by degrees everything that will pass, strongly at the end. Sour spirits then pass over, considerably sharpening the vinegar. You thus obtain clear vinegar at once, which can then be sharpened with various salts. If a little oiliness has passed over with it, pour it back and distil once more: it is ready for sharpening.

This distilled vinegar can also be sharpened in many ways, one method better than another: with common salt, wine lees, sal ammoniac, salt of tartar and potash, or spirit of nitre, salt, vitriol or sulphur. Whoever wishes to sharpen it with such things may do so, for it will produce a most excellent effect that is not to be made public. If one wishes to sharpen such vinegar with wine lees, which are full of oil, one must also give it an addition that retains the oil. Only the volatile salt then passes over with the vinegar: this is the whole masterstroke that strengthens the vinegar. Whoever wishes to use salt, salt of tartar or potash must likewise provide an addition through which the vinegar can and should be impregnated with their spirit: clay, bole, bloodstone, red chalk, minium, tripoli and so forth. One may also make a composition of these salts: combine salt of tartar and sal ammoniac, or all three—salt, salt of tartar and sal ammoniac—and distil the vinegar from them to complete dryness.