Collection of Alchemical Treatises

hours a small fire, and another six increasing the fire, and for another twelve hours a strong fire: the [first] six hours with a charcoal fire, and the other eighteen with a wood fire; and the mercury will ascend and become a sublimate white as snow, of marvelous virtue. And it is made [thus]: let one pound of the last-made and five-times-rectified menstruum be taken [and poured] over the cinnabar and three ounces of the said powdered sublimate with the said water in a bain-marie for three or four days, and all the sublimate will be converted into water; then it is distilled by ashes, and it will be a perfect menstruum, although Raymond Lully in his Testament strongly commends the first, but I find more benefit of dissolution and perfection in this one, more than with aqua vitae; for the sublimate dissolved in water is closer to metallic bodies than the vegetable, although all are good and perfect, and one may make both.

One must take cinnabar, Vitriol, and saltpeter, as much of one as of the other, and put them into a vessel having a long neck, and give it an ash fire until all the humidity is out; and stop the vial or vessel with cotton, and continue the fire for twenty-four hours, and it will sublime for you a mass white as snow, and just like a loaf in the form of hairs; it must be taken diligently and placed and imbibed with oil of tartar in a long-necked matrass well stopped.