The Prosperity of Germany, Part Two

separated in a cupel. But he who knows how to melt this calx with antimony and precipitate it with copper or iron holding gold, he certainly will obtain a greater quantity of gold than he will achieve by the former operation through lead. But not everyone knows how to put this operation into effect: smelting, reduction into scoriae, and separation through cupels are better known operations and easier to perform.

Furthermore, there are also some metals which can be fixed by wet fire, that is, by strong aqua fortis, so that they render gold and silver through scoriae, especially tin, quicksilver, and lead. If vehement aqua fortis is abstracted even once from tin dissolved in it, it turns out so fixed that it does not yield even to the most vehement fire, but is changed into a clear glass by the help of a flux. If you wish it to bring forth gold for you, you must melt it with other metals into which gold receives itself and acquires a body: such are silver and lead. If lead is dissolved in aqua fortis and precipitated with urine, it puts on such hardness that it rejects almost all melting in a crucible: if it is knocked down to the bottom by some lye, it goes into glass by melting: if it is precipitated by salt water and receives itself to the bottom, it becomes very volatile and refuses to bear fire. For common salt procures volatility and fugacity for all metals; niter, however, fixes them in both the dry and wet way, so that they do not flee the fire, but remain fixed in it. For the sake of confirming these things which we say, I would have you consider with what easy labor the common mercury can be led to the point where it scorns the violence of fire; which a more vehement aqua fortis, often poured upon it and again abstracted, brings about, which renders it so fixed that it can even be made white like a metal. But the more often it is elevated with spirit of salt, the more fugitive and volatile it is rendered. Therefore, out of all salts, not even one fixes minerals except for the most noble niter, exerting its powers equally in the wet and dry way, as has just been demonstrated.

This fixation of volatile minerals and imperfect metals by niter, whether by the wet or dry way