11 Chapter XI and Last: On the Alkahest, or Alka Est

Chapter outline

The limitations of corrosive dissolvents

A mercurial subject joining acid and alkaline natures

Making mercury saline and aqueous

Different salts and waters used to sharpen the dissolvent

Names, disagreements, and the concluding invitation to study

To give the reader some knowledge of the much-discussed circulated Alka Est, the most penetrating vinegar, I shall describe it indirectly and bring this book to its end. Without becoming too lengthy: the philosophers saw that, in the sense explained above, they accomplished little or nothing through corrosives. A corrosive that dissolves an acidic metal does not dissolve an alkaline one; and a corrosive that dissolves alkaline subjects does not dissolve acidic ones. For when acid and alkali meet, they devour one another to death and give birth to a third thing. They therefore searched nature for a subject that would dissolve both acidic and alkaline subjects without distinction, one as readily as the other, producing the same effect in solution. Having searched everything, they all said that it must be a hermaphroditic subject, joining itself to both natures. Among other places, they found such subjects in all mercurial materials: arsenicals, marcasites, and realgars after removal of combustible sulphur, and in all flowing and coagulated mercuries. They took these mercuries and made a further selection among them, according to each person's preference. Most, however, take a mercury most nearly specified toward metallic substance, which adheres to metals in conjunction down to their marrow, leaving them undestroyed after its separation. They choose a mercury which, in its coagulation and fixation, is transmuted into a metal other than gold and silver.

But they saw that such mercury was too thick and insufficiently sharp to reduce metals to their first being and bring them into a liquid state. They recognized that, if metals were to become homogeneous with all creatures, they had to assume the nature of salt, oil, or water. Mercury in its simple nature could not give metals this saline nature. They also saw that neither simple water nor earth would dissolve mercury or metals, or reduce them to a saline nature. They clearly perceived that, to reduce metals to salt, oil, water, and so forth, mercury first had to be brought into a salt or saline water, so that like might be generated through like. They therefore took such mercury and brought it, by various methods, into salt and water, following whichever path had succeeded in their experience. The more sharply someone animated his mercury, the better it dissolved; the less sharply, the worse and more slowly. They saw that without such a nature mercury would penetrate little or nothing. They were therefore compelled to bring mercury into a salt and afterward into water, calling upon all acids and alkalis for help and, willing or unwilling, embracing—imploring—the corrosives without which mercury would not fight. As one person's method was better or worse than another's, they sharpened their mercury through salts as well as they could.

Some took animal, vegetable, and mineral salts mixed together to sharpen mercury; some took vegetable and animal salts; others universal and mineral salts, according to the method that had succeeded for them. Then they recommended that method so zealously that one might think no other existed in nature and that they alone had turned all nature upside down. Once they had made mercury into salt, they reflected that nature uses water in every generation, corruption, and mixture, and makes scarcely any dry composition for which water is not necessary. They therefore made this saline mercury into a water with water, so that by such expansion it might penetrate metals and minerals better and reach them to the very centre of their soul. They took this mercury and, with water, made it into water through a retort. The more penetrating the water, the better and more swiftly mercury attacked the metals; the weaker the water, the more slowly their mercury would consent to dissolve. Some therefore worked it with animal waters, others with vegetable, mineral, or universal waters, or compounded a mixture of these, driving mercury back and forth with them until it passed with them into a water.

The sharper and more spiritual they made this water, the swifter the effect they obtained. Conversely, if they left the water coarse, crude, and entirely bodily, so that mercury did not become a spirit along with it, their operation was correspondingly less perfect. When they had thus brought mercury into such a spiritual water, they called it the most penetrating vinegar, the philosophers' metallic acid, Acherontic or infernal, also known as the greater circulatum. Some also made mercury into water by fire alone, without any salt. Since it would not penetrate, they were again compelled to call upon saline, penetrating, sharp waters for assistance, sharpening it with animal, vegetable, mineral, or universal waters. But some were so fearful and scrupulous that, if they used sharp mineral waters, mercury might become a corrosive. They sharpened it only with animal and vegetable waters and hatched out their operations with these, according to their success. For they feared that a spirit sharpened with corrosives might hatch nothing but basilisks. If anyone wishes to prepare such a menstruum, let him study this account and put together one that pleases him. For additional assistance, processes of this kind, with all their manual operations, can be consulted here and there in various publicly printed authors, where they have merely been concealed under another name. He may apply himself to them and put his brain to the test. END.