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What hot solution dissolves.
The twofold solution of heat and cold.
4. What Putrefaction is and its kinds.
Putrefaction is the fourth stage and includes Digestion and Circulation. It is a very important stage and would rightly be first, were that not contrary to the proper order and the mystery hidden here and revealed to very few. As stated, these stages must follow one another like links in a chain or rungs in a ladder. Remove one link and the chain is broken and the freed captive escapes. Remove a rung from the middle of a ladder and place it at the top or bottom, and the ladder is likewise broken: many would fall headlong from it, with great harm and danger to life. Understand that these stages must follow in their proper order; otherwise the entire work of our mystery would be disordered and all labour and effort vain and fruitless. Putrefaction is so effective that it abolishes the old nature, transmutes all things into a different new nature and produces another new fruit. All living things die in it; all dead things putrefy in it; all dead things recover life in it. Putrefaction removes acridity from all corrosive spirits of salt and makes them mild and sweet. It changes colours, separates the pure from the impure, and places the pure above and the impure below, each apart.
The stated order of stages must be kept in transmuting.
What the marvellous force of putrefaction is.
5. What Distillation is and how many kinds it has.
Distillation is the fifth stage toward the transmutation of all natural things. It includes Ascent, Washing and Fixation. Through distillation all waters, liquors and oils are subtilised; oil is extracted from all fatty things, water from all liquors, and oil and water are separated from all phlegmatic things. Many things are also fixed in distillation through cohobation, especially if the things to be fixed contain water, such as vitriol. When fixed it is called colcothar. Alum fixed with its own water is called sugar alum. It also resolves into liquor, which, if putrefied for a month, produces water sweet as sugar. This has great virtue and is an outstanding medical arcanum for extinguishing the microcosmic fire in miners, as we write more fully in the books On Metallic Diseases. What you have heard about vitriol and alum applies also to salt nitre: other watery minerals can be fixed through cohobation.
Cohobation and so forth.
Fixation through distillation.
What cohobation is.
Cohobation is the repeated imbibition of the caput mortuum with its own water, which is drawn off again by distillation. In distillation many bitter, tart and acrid things become very sweet like honey, sugar or manna. Conversely, many sweet things, such as sugar, honey and manna, become astringent like oil of vitriol or vinegar, bitter like gall or gentian, or acrid like a corrosive. Many undosa lose their excessive stench in distillation, which passes out in the water; many aromatics lose their good smell. Like sublimation, distillation alters things in quality and nature.