8 the Anatomy of Plants

Chapter outline

Separation of soft and hard vegetable subjects

Different proportions of principles and their claimed medicinal uses

Reunion and the volatile vegetable salt

Supplying missing principles from universal subjects

The principal subjects of the three kingdoms

The subtle oil, accidental differences, and the practitioner's task

In separation and coagulation, this kingdom is like the animal kingdom, differing only in the quantity of its principles. The animal kingdom retains its stinking urinous volatile salt; the vegetable has its stinking burning spirit, although to many a drinker of brandy this is as agreeable as musk and ambergris. This kingdom, like the animal, also contains different kinds of subjects: succulent herbs, leaves, stalks, fruit, juice, gum, resin, oil, seeds, wood, and roots, as well as hard, dry parts, stalks, roots, wood, and seeds. We must therefore make a small distinction here too, for the benefit of the lover of the art. Take everything succulent and green; pound, cut, and crush it as you can. If it has insufficient juice by its own nature, add enough putrefied rainwater, wine, or saltwater to make a thin pulp. Or, if you prefer, press out the juice and let it ferment like wine, or as peasants make perry or cider from pears or apples. Every soft vegetable subject can be treated this way, and hard ones too if finely divided and supplied with sufficient moisture. Alternatively, leave the pulped herb all together, put it in a wooden vessel, and set it in a lukewarm place to macerate until it gives off a sour or putrid smell, about fourteen days and nights or three weeks. Then put it into a still and slowly distil off its subtle volatile with its subtle phlegm. Remove the residue, let it become entirely dry, put it in a retort in sand, and distil by degrees. First you obtain a coarser water, then vinegar, then the thick oil. At the bottom remains the mass burned to coal. The vegetable is now separated.

But note that, just as plants differ from one another, their parts differ in quantity too. One contains much volatile, another more vinegar or oil, according to how much universal seed it has specified, coagulated, and fixed within itself. Their virtues and powers, and their uses in curing and application, are apportioned according to this principle. A fragrant herb containing much volatile has the power to strengthen and restore not only the natural, vital, or animal spirit, but the mental spirit too. If it has no pleasant smell, it strengthens the animal, vital, and natural spirits. Yet the effect does not always depend on its noble outward fragrance, but more on the inward one, which, distilled through the archeus, quickly refreshes and cures the injured member. If the herb contains much acid, it is specified to cure the more solid members: muscles, tendons, bones, cartilage, thickened, thicker, and viscous parts, and so forth. So too with oil: the thicker its essential parts, the denser and more coagulated are the bodily parts they strengthen or destroy, according to their application. Every physician knows that a highly volatile thing can never nourish fixed bones. When a volatile being enters the body, it acts immediately through heat upon all the members and is finally expelled through the pores as vapour or sweat. An acid, by contrast, does not reach that point, but moves either urine or stool. We see that, when a fragrant object is held beneath the nose of a deeply melancholic person, the very moment he smells it he feels relief and refreshment in his sorrowful heart. This quickly passing fragrance gives him no lasting stability, especially if he has committed a sin deserving the gallows or the like, or is distressed by the burden of his debts or his wicked wife. Nevertheless, we see him acknowledge that its fragrance and spirit are pleasing and refreshing to his mind. Conversely, if someone maliciously puts a stench beneath his nose, he at that very moment becomes still more distressed, sorrowful, sick, and angry. Likewise the spirit of a warm animal or herb warms a cold melancholic, while a cold narcotic spirit cools a choleric. This is by way of a digression. A practical worker already knows how to distinguish the specific qualities.

Once the vegetable has been separated in this way, conjunction takes place in the manner and order stated for rainwater and the animal subject. In all respects it can be treated according to the various routes, methods, or processes disclosed above for rainwater and animals. There is no need to repeat these and become too lengthy. I must give the lover of the art a skill. Many chymists have laboured to obtain the vegetable volatile salt without succeeding, although it is a very easy matter. When you set the herb to macerate and putrefy, let it stand until maggots and worms grow in it, which happens soon. When this has occurred, distil from a tall flask in a water bath. An animal-urinous spirit comes over, and the volatile salt attaches itself to the head, and so on. This is the evident reason and cause showing that the vegetable has become animal, since the animal kingdom is richer in volatile salt. Let the reader note this well: through reflection he will obtain many other things that he has long been troubled to find.

As for harder plants, woody herbs and roots, wood, and so on, prepare and treat these like the hard, bony animal parts. Crush them as finely as possible, pour on putrefied rainwater, wine, saltwater, or saltpetre-water, and let them macerate; or boil them until soft, and then putrefy them. Alternatively, cut them into small pieces and cook them dry in a retort, as taught for animals. Once separated, their conjunction is the same here as there. To prevent another scruple arising for the lover of the art on this point—that wood, distilled dry without putrefaction, has no volatile, as also happens with animals and so forth—I shall repeat the matter to the point of weariness and supply what is needed, since homogeneous things exist among all individuals in the world. Let him merely take putrefied rainwater or snow-water, and he has a volatile for everything that lacks one. Likewise, if he has no acid or alkali, let him take saltpetre or its spirit; the alkali is salt. Then let him distil all the volatile and phlegm from rainwater and drive the residue through a retort. He obtains vinegar, while alkali is found in the residue through reverberation. He thus has everything he can wish and lacks nothing. A practitioner should note that a universal subject becomes specified toward every individual. Suppose I have no volatile, but do have acid, oil, and alkali: I add the volatile of rainwater as a universal. It becomes specified with the other principles, taking on the quality and specification of the acid to which it is added. For the saying is: the denomination comes from the predominant part. Acid, oil, and alkali are present in greater quantity, so they can easily master the small quantity of volatile and transmute it into their nature;

the same holds for acid and alkali. If a subject existed in nature that contained no acid or alkali but was purely volatile, where should I obtain an acid or alkali to fix this volatile and concentrate it into a stone? Look about in nature for something homogeneous. If I find none within its specified kingdom—though there is plenty—I turn to the universal: rainwater and snow-water, saltpetre and salt. Here I already have the homogeneous subject I require. If I possess a specified part, the universals immediately take on specification through joining it and operate according to its quality and predestination. Everyone can see with their eyes that universal subjects such as dew, rain, and snow scarcely come to birth before they instantly assume a specific nature again and are changed into it. As they fall, they attach themselves to animal, vegetable, and mineral creatures and become such things with them. Merely boil an animal, vegetable, or mineral with saltpetre and salt, wet or dry, and these immediately share its quality. Yet one need not wander and go too far toward the universals, since God has given each kingdom a principal subject that comprehends all subjects of its kind in general and, in the judgment of all philosophers, corresponds to every individual in its kingdom through and with its volatile, acid, and alkali principles. In the animal or bestial kind this is the human being, man and woman, with all their parts, urine, excrement, flesh, bones, and so forth; in the vegetable kingdom, wine and grain or wheat; in the mineral, common salt and nitre. These can assist all hot and cold subjects and fill the place of the missing principles: volatile, acid, and alkali.