New Philosophical Furnaces

In this manner of distilling, you will be able to stop and start again at your pleasure, for there is no danger from it.

When you are about to clean the furnace, you have nothing else to do but pull out the iron rods which rest upon the cross-bars, so that the caput mortuum Literally "dead head"; the dross or useless residue left behind in a vessel after a substance has been distilled or heated to exhaustion. may fall down, which must afterwards be removed with a shovel original: "batillo"; once this is done, it is necessary that the removed iron rods be placed back upon the cross-bars, and live coals placed upon them, with others added until sufficient, and finally, once these are lit, the materials.

When about to clean the receiving vessels to begin the distillation of another substance, there is no need to remove them, but only to pour in pure water through the upper receiver—namely, the one at the top—by the descent of which they are purified.

And by this method, not only from vegetables, volatiles, and minerals (those that are non-combustible), but even from fixed metals and stones, spirits, oils, and flowers In early chemistry, "flowers" refers to the dry, powdery sublimate produced when a solid is heated and then condenses, such as "flowers of sulfur." are wonderfully, easily, and copiously drawn out, which cannot otherwise be done by the common art of distillation.

In this furnace, however, only those kinds of materials are distilled which, when distilled, yield a non-combustible moisture, such as common salt, vitriol A historical name for various sulfate minerals, such as green vitriol (iron sulfate) or blue vitriol (copper sulfate)., alum, as well as other minerals and metals; yet each of these requires its own peculiar manual treatments.

Since this furnace does not serve every material—because the species to be distilled are thrown directly upon live coals, such as with combustible materials—I have decided to provide another, smaller furnace in the second part...