In how many ways plants are separated.

Things which grow from the earth and are combustible, such as fruits, herbs, flowers, leaves, grasses, roots and woods, are likewise separated in many ways. Distillation first separates phlegm from them, then mercury, then oil, then resin, then sulphur, and finally salt. When all these separations are performed according to the spagyric art, many distinguished and excellent medicines emerge, to be applied both internally and externally to the body.

Reproof of physicians.

Since idleness has gained such strength among those physicians, and all their work and study is turned solely towards arrogance, I am certainly not surprised that preparations of this kind are everywhere neglected and charcoal sells so cheaply. If craftsmen could dispense with charcoal in forging and working their metals as easily as those physicians dispense with it in preparing medicines, all charcoal burners would undoubtedly have been reduced to utter poverty long ago.

Praise of spagyric physicians and how they differ from other physicians.

The stages of alchemy.

Meanwhile I rightly exalt and honour spagyric physicians with the praise they deserve. They do not surrender to leisure and sloth, strut in proud dress clothed in silk, display rings on their fingers, hang silver daggers at their hips or turn fine gloves in their hands. They attend diligently to their work and sweat through whole days and nights among fiery furnaces. They do not pass the time strolling for pleasure, but find their delight in the laboratory. They wear garments of leather or hide, hanging an apron before them on which to wipe their hands. They put their fingers into charcoal, mud and dung, not into golden rings. Like smiths and charcoal burners they are sooty and dirty, and do not pride themselves on a polished face. They are not talkative at the sickbed and do not loudly praise their medicines, knowing that the work should praise the craftsman, not the craftsman his work, and that elegant words cannot cure the sick. Putting all these vanities aside, they rejoice in working around the fire and learning the stages of alchemical science: distillation, dissolution, putrefaction, extraction, calcination, reverberation, sublimation, fixation, separation, reduction, coagulation, tincture and the like.

How all these separations are performed according to spagyric and alchemical art by means of distinct stages has already been stated in general, so it is pointless to repeat it here. To proceed a little towards particular kinds and explain the practice very briefly, you should know that water, spirit, liquor, oiliness and so forth cannot be separated by distillation from herbs, flowers, seeds, leaves, roots, trees, fruits and woods by one and the same process.

Four degrees of fire in distillation.

Which things are distilled at which degree of fire.

Waters.

Oils.