7 the Anatomy of Animals

Chapter outline

Putrefaction, the animal parts, and the author's reported apparitions

Separation of liquid subjects into volatile, vinegar, oil, and coal

The required order of reunion and the role of phlegm

Hard parts and two abbreviated methods

The different aims of nature and art

Purification by flame and reunion in stated proportions

Retention of oil and preparation in quantity

Vinegar as mediator and transition to plants

Without putrefaction, separation and distillation yield no powerful waters from animal or vegetable subjects, apart from what concerns their mere animal or vegetable smell. Conversely, prior putrefaction unlocks all their powers, yielding the urinous volatile salt of the animal kingdom and the volatile burning spirit of the vegetable, and so forth. Since we intend to describe a proper anatomy of things, we rightly begin according to nature's laws, proceeding and perfecting it through her degrees of preparation, putrefaction, or solution. All subjects and individuals in the whole wide world differ from one another. So it is here in the animal kingdom: whole bodies contain blood, flesh, veins, skin, marrow, bones, and various urine and excrement, all of which are taken for medicine. Alternatively, separated bodily parts are used individually for medicine: blood, urine, excrement, bones, skin, hair, horn, and so on, making a separate medicine from each. We shall describe these parts collectively and individually, separate them, reunite them, and bring them into a quintessence: first all that is liquid, then the dry parts. Above all the others, this kingdom has the most repulsive and terrifying practice because of its stench in putrefaction. Yet because of its exceedingly penetrating volatile salt, it has a more powerful and swifter action than the other kingdoms. I advise a chymist, however, not to begin working straightaway with blood in an animal subject, and so forth. For it happened to me, when I sought to distil the more fixed parts through a retort, that the evestrum of human beings and other animals appeared to me in a monstrous form in the receiver. With human material, a rattling began in the retort, as if a ghost were within it, which is very terrifying, although it does not happen every time. But if flesh and blood are allowed to putrefy, they raise a stench. Therefore, take instead, if available, the excretions of any animal, urine and excrement, which are best and contain all the animal's power; afterward horns, small bones, hooves, hair, and scales. Yet we shall describe everything as well as possible, so that nothing is lacking.

Now take an animal's blood, juice, urine, or anything liquid: one of these or all together, it makes no difference, for all are made from one matter. Although one is more volatile or more fixed than another, they have one substance because they come from one subject. Put it in a covered vessel and set it in a gently warm place to putrefy. Anyone wishing to avoid the stench should put it in a flask with a well-sealed head and receiver, set it in a water bath at the first degree, and leave it fourteen days and nights; then there is no need to fear the smell. Once it has stood this long or longer, according to its condition, distil off by degrees in the water bath everything that will come over, and keep it. If you wish to rectify it, do so and separate its phlegm; you obtain a penetrating urinous spirit and volatile salt. Vinegar does not rise through the alembic. Once this is done, remove the flask, put the remaining matter in a retort in sand, and drive it slowly by degrees. Phlegm comes first, followed by a spirit that penetrates the tongue: the animal vinegar. A stinking thick oil follows, leaving at the bottom a matter burned into coal, the alkaline part. You have now separated the volatile, vinegar, oil, and alkaline coal. These are the animal substance and inward being, together with its impurities, of which it consists.

To bring these back into one, you must again observe the philosophers' axiom: one cannot pass from one extreme to the other without an intermediary. The volatile spirit and the coals are the two extremes; they never unite without their intermediate nature. That intermediate nature is their water or phlegm, their penetrating spirit or vinegar. Nor do these unite if taken in reversed order, except so slowly that the labour becomes wearisome. If, for example, you wished to join the volatile spirit to the oil, or the vinegar to the coals, skipping vinegar in the first case and oil in the second, it would not work. In their own appointed order, by contrast, they readily join at once. One must therefore preserve this order: as they followed one another in separation, so must they follow one another in conjunction. Then they immediately coagulate together through appropriately moderate degrees of fire. Whoever wishes to rectify these parts makes them subtler, but neither quicker nor better. To work faster, take the volatile with the phlegm, or separate the phlegm from it and pour it into the acid; the two are thus joined. Then take the oil, rub it into the coals, the caput mortuum, and put it in a flask. Pour the vinegar and volatile over it, set it in a gentle water bath to digest for two days and nights, and distil slowly by degrees. The volatile spirit comes over very weakly with the phlegm; most of the volatile and acid remain at the bottom. Remove this from the water bath and set it in ashes to dry, coagulate, and reverberate, as taught in chapter V. After reverberation, imbibe it again with its distilled volatile, set it in the water bath to digest, and then distil in ashes to coagulate, dry, and finally fix it. Follow in every respect what was taught earlier for rainwater, for the same order must be followed here too. The quintessence of the animal kingdom is then ready.

Someone may now ask: 'Why does he say that he leaves the phlegm with it, or separates it away? Is it of no use?' To answer this, I leave the phlegm with it at first. Even if it remains and is not driven off from the volatile by rectification, the fixing essential part does not accept it, but always lets it go again in distillation. Note what I said above: phlegm is still an unripe, non-saline seed, and therefore a vehicle and instrument of the active and receptive universal spirit. Through it the natural, coagulated, sleeping spirit in a body forges or has forged everything, changes or has changed everything. As long as phlegm is present, it awakens the spirit again, so that it begins to work and act anew, bringing about continual change through that phlegm. To confirm this, take a prepared quintessence when all the volatile has been coagulated and concentrated upon it, and put it in a flask that the phlegm can fill right to the top. Pour its own phlegm upon it, set it in a warm place, and pay attention: you will see a strange play. The spirit or evestrum will present the form of the animal from which the subject was taken, as it was when alive. Put it in the cold, and it disappears again. From this, the practitioner concludes why phlegm is removed: it awakens the implanted spirit to act. Nevertheless, phlegm should not be discarded. It is filled and impregnated throughout with its subject's spirit and power, like all distilled apothecaries' waters. Instead of taking the quintessence in another vehicle, I take it in its own, its own separated phlegm. Secondly, such phlegm is useful for bringing a fresh subject into putrefaction, rather than adding some foreign kind, such as well-water, rainwater, or sourdough, although well-water and rainwater are also universally homogeneous. So much for the liquid parts of animals.

Now let us take the dry and drier parts. Take flesh, bones, horn, hair, hooves, skin, and whatever is harder in an animal. Pound, cut, crush, rasp, file, and reduce whichever of these you wish as finely as you can. Put it in a flask and pour upon it blood, putrefied urine, or juice from the animal from which the subject was taken; if all these are lacking, use putrid rainwater. Prefer the microcosm, however—that is, human material—because the human being is the concentrated centre of the entire animal kingdom, into which all the powers of the other animals have flowed, just as all the powers of other plants flow into wine, and all mineral powers into nitre and its vitriolic gur. Pour, I say, one of these over your finely divided subject, set it in a water bath, vapour bath, or horse dung, and let it putrefy. Then separate it through the flask in the water bath and in ashes, distilling off all its parts as already stated. If desired, rectify each part according to the teaching given and reunite it in every respect like the preceding subjects. But animal hair in particular is almost wholly a fatty coagulated substance, a rich oily matter; oily substances are mostly balsamic and enter putrefaction with difficulty and very slowly. The same holds for bones and horns, which might discourage a lover of the art from undertaking such wearisome operations. I must therefore show two shorter manual procedures by which he can succeed quickly.