Notes of experiments in chemistry and alchemy (MS Add.3973)

make the glass?

Heat until the glass was at a dark red heat and began to melt. The caput mortuum original: caput mort; the solid residue remaining after distillation had a vitriolic original: vitriolique; acidic or metallic, like sulfuric acid taste. In the distillation, the entire matter remained liquid and transparent (except for a very small amount of sediment) until the salt began to rise and solidify original: coagulate in the neck of the glass. When a little of it had risen, the material in the bottom of the retort a glass vessel with a long, downward-pointing neck used for distillation set, solidified, and grew drier and drier until all that was volatile was distilled over. I put some of the caput mortuum into water, but the water dissolved only a negligible amount of it. Perhaps if it were dissolved in some other liquid, water would cause it to precipitate.

The volatile salt rose in the first distillation as easily as [antimony?], but once distilled, it was exceedingly volatile. So much so, that in an unstopped glass, a noticeable quantity of it in the cold sublimed turned directly from a solid to a vapor on its own; within half an hour, it settled? on the sides of the glass like a white smoke, just as a corrosive sublimate would do in a great heat on any cold body held near it.

In a small amount of this salt, I dissolved some mercury original symbol: ☿ using gentle heat. The salt flowed like tallow at a temperature not much higher than that of blood, and it immediately acted on the mercury without boiling original: ebullition; together, they formed a thickish paste of a light ash color. Even when the heat was not as great as that of boiling water, the salt began to evaporate. After I had stirred the mercury and salt together for a while and kept them in a gentle heat so that the salt might be saturated original: satiated, I took a little of it out of the glass on a quill, laid it on a piece of glass, and put it in the fire to evaporate. The salt evaporated quickly and left the mercury solidified original: coagulated in a hard, rugged lump.

I put the glass back into the fire and made it red-hot so that whatever was volatile might fly away; the mercury remained (or at least some part of it) as off-white crumbly original: friable lumps. I also put some mercury into the liquid which came over before the salt; it immediately discolored the mercury and made it flow sluggishly original: run heavily, from which I imagined it had dissolved it. I poured out two or three drops on a piece of glass and put it into the fire to evaporate. It was clear and of an amber color.