Here I shall describe a sharpened vinegar that should be better than the rooted vinegar commonly employed for so many years. Take 3 parts salt of tartar, 2 parts spirit of salt, and 8 or 12 parts distilled vinegar. Mix the vinegar and spirit of salt. Put the salt of tartar into a retort, pour over it the vinegar with spirit of salt, set it in sand and distil it over to complete dryness. Remove the salt of tartar from the retort, add two parts calcined alum, return it to the retort and pour the distillate over it. Again distil it over strongly by degrees. You have rooted vinegar that will produce as much effect at once as the ordinary kind in a hundred operations. Remove the dead head from the retort. If salt of tartar remains in it, cohobate once or twice more by pouring on and drawing off, until all the salt of tartar has risen over. You will have made it as well as possible. I have been justified in interchanging acids and alkalis. If you know their distinction, no further instruction is necessary. Acids are subjects subtler than alkalis: they have not dissolved so much earth within themselves. Otherwise they are alike and come from one mother and origin; more or less volatility and fixation make the difference.

By this I mean to indicate the dissolution of fixed things. For these you require an earthly, fixed, alkalized spirit; for volatile things and those less tightly bound, a volatile spirit and spirit of wine. Attend to the homogeneous: like delights in like. Minerals and metals require a homogeneous mineral spirit, as will become clear below. Vinegar is a weak vegetable subject; it must therefore be strengthened so that, with the other’s doubled power, it can attack what is too strong for it by nature. This is the principal reason for using vinegar: it tempers and sweetens all corrosives dangerous to human health. Otherwise it could readily be dispensed with. Aqua fortis and spirits of nitre, salt, vitriol and sulphur dissolve any and every subject without vinegar; vinegar, however, tempers their sharpness and makes them agreeable to every nature. One also sees that minerals have their volatile, but it is contrary to the other kingdoms and less volatile. To make them like the other kingdoms, one adds a volatile from the vegetable kingdom, their nearest relative, or from a universal subject. The chymist is not bound to vegetable vinegar. He can equally take one from snow and rain, as universal matter; it will do the same. But wine vinegar is already made in abundance, so no roundabout boiling is needed for it.

We are further informed here that each kingdom carries its own solvent on its back and has its principles. If one is lacking, it can be obtained abundantly from universals, which associate with and become like every nature: regenerated chaotic water, or rain, dew and snow. From these a volatile can, if necessary, be obtained in quantity. If no acid or alkali is available either, nitre is a universal acid and salt a universal alkali. Distilled into spirits, they present an acid and an alkaline spirit which, according to their application, make themselves homogeneous with all creatures. Whoever understands what has been sufficiently explained above—that animals, vegetables and minerals do not differ at their centre but are essentially one, differing only by fermentation, from which greater and lesser volatility and fixation arise—will have no scruple in nature. If one thing does not please him, he takes the nearest thing like and homogeneous to it. It has thus been proved that the volatile becomes acid and acid alkali; conversely, alkali becomes acid through acid, and acid becomes volatile. Each is the other’s magnet and must be transformed through the other. If I take much volatile, it overcomes acid, so acid becomes volatile. If I take much acid and little alkali, acid overcomes alkali, so alkali becomes acid. If I take much acid and little volatile, acid overcomes volatile, so volatile becomes acid. The stronger conquers, makes the weaker like itself and subjects it. We have now shown generally what putrefaction is and accomplishes: it makes the fixed volatile and the volatile fixed, in theory and practice. It makes acid from the volatile and alkali from acid; conversely, acid from alkali, then volatile from acid once again—back to its first nature and origin. Since putrefaction has revealed to us the volatile and fixed, the volatile, acid and alkali, let us examine what volatile, acid and alkali are in general and in particular.