You now see that, although you separated all your parts as thoroughly as possible from every phlegm or recolaceum, after coagulation you still find much phlegm—more than quintessence. You also see how quickly homogeneous parts unite, coagulate, embrace one another, and hold together so firmly that they will penetrate downward through the crucible or glass before parting again. They fix themselves that swiftly. Even if an addition is used to drive them through a retort, they still all share in one another, and none can any longer be distinguished from another. Here the lover of the art has various practices and manual procedures by which he can concentrate the entire substance of each thing, except its recolacean water or phlegm, and bring it into a dry, fixed, fusible form. He can carry it throughout all lands without danger; one grain acts more powerfully than many measures of ordinary distilled water. But someone will say: 'Why, then, does he burn the oil, since it is an essential part?' I have willingly done so to work more quickly. The practitioner should note the oil in the work of art, recognizable from its tincture when acid and volatile are poured over it: it displays an intense ruby-red, golden-yellow, or other colour. Anyone wishing to retain the oil and take the fixed only from the incinerated coal may do so. Once the quintessence has fused into a stone, he can add the oil, mix it with the stone, add its withdrawn phlegm, cook them together in the water bath, and draw off slowly by degrees to dryness. Then coagulate and fix it in ashes and sand and melt it into a stone, as I clearly described earlier for rainwater.

Someone might complain here: 'Yes, this method would be good if it could be arranged in quantity, and better still if poor and rich alike could enjoy it and apothecaries could supply it cheaply.' That is easy. A little reflection makes the arrangement evident. Let an apothecary take three baskets of a herb, say lemon balm; or take an animal's blood, urine, or flesh and set it in a large flask to putrefy. Then take the animal's bones, horns, hooves, hair, and so on. While the liquid parts putrefy, put half the prepared and finely divided drier parts into a retort and distil off the acid and oil, obtaining acid, oil, and coals in quantity. Give the other half of the dry parts to a potter to calcine in open pots, and leach from this ash as much fixed salt as it yields. From the liquid part that has stood in putrefaction, distil a volatile in quantity. Its residue can also be calcined and its salt leached, yielding still more salt. He then has the principles in quantity and need only perform conjunction and coagulation to obtain abundant quintessence for sale at a low price.

I must note that animals yield little fixed salt but much saltless earth. How, then, can one obtain fixed salt in quantity to fix the volatile parts? One must return to nature's place, where nature herself forges universal alkali abundantly. This universal alkali is homogeneous with all creatures. There are entire mountains of salt, and common table salt is the best balsam of all animals, especially human beings. It is easy to specify this toward any subject being quintessentified. Take the dry animal parts being sent to the potter for calcination, reduce them to small pieces, and mix in a fourth or third part of table salt. The salt burns and becomes specified with them, becoming a specific animal alkali. The practitioner therefore cannot complain that he cannot separate quintessence in quantity from everything. An apothecary could furnish his shop entirely with quintessences, which, if he had a stock, would never spoil as his waters, oils, ointments, and so forth do. Preparing the quintessence only every three years, he could make several pounds from each subject that would not spoil, and sell it cheaply to his neighbour. He does not sell quintessence by pounds, ounces, or lots, but by grains and scruples; in a small dose it helps powerfully and swiftly. He can thus doubly recover the time spent making waters and oils, and fill his purse as well as before, indeed better. Herbs are easier still, as the next chapter teaches. Take a quantity, such as three baskets of a herb; set one to ferment and putrefy, and gently dry the other two in shade until thoroughly dry. Burn one to ash in a baking oven or at a potter's; from the other distil vinegar and oil. After rectification, unite them into quintessence in abundance.

From what has been said, the practitioner sees that nature can beautifully be united and separated through intermediaries, if only he studies diligently. She reveals all the intermediaries herself. Between the volatile and alkali, place vinegar, which is found in all subjects and without which no lasting conjunction can arise. It is neither fixed nor volatile, but a mediator, a true hermaphrodite and Janus, looking both backward and forward. Coming to the volatile, it is welcome; coming to alkali, it is equally so. With the volatile it becomes volatile, with the fixed it becomes fixed. No author has described this point; I therefore consider it a most noble secret. Give thanks to the one who has permitted it to be revealed to you. With these matters completed—the anatomy of animals—we pass in order to the hermaphroditic kingdom of plants, whose head stands by the animal kingdom and whose root rests upon the mineral, to bring out its innermost being too. Thus follows the next chapter.