We do not deem it necessary here to repeat the method of mortifying gold so that it may be reduced to its arcana, as, for instance, to tincture, quintessence, resin, crocus, vitriol, and sulphur. These preparations are manifold, and for the most part we have already given such secrets in other books, as the extraction of the Tincture of Sol, the Quintessence of Sol, the Mercury of Sol, Sol Potabilis, the resin of Sol, the Crocus of Sol. These have been given in the Archidoxa and elsewhere. But the secrets omitted there we will impart here. These concern the vitriol of Sol[1] and the sulphur of Sol, which are by no means the least among such secrets, and, indeed, ought to delight every physician. In order to extract vitriol from Sol, proceed thus: Take two or three marks of pure gold, which form into plates and suspend above boys' urine, mixed with grape-berries, in a wide glass cucurbite closely sealed at the top. Bury this in a glowing heap of grape berries, as they are taken from the wine-press, and let it stand there for a fortnight or three weeks. Then open it, and you will find a most subtle colour, which is vitriol of Sol, adhering to the plates of Sol. Remove this with a hare's foot, as you have been told in the case of the other metals—the crocus of Mars from the plates of iron, the vitriol of Venus and verdigris from the plates of copper, the cerussa from the plates of Saturn, the lazurium from the plates of Luna—all these being comprised under one process, but not with the same preparation. When, therefore, you have enough of this vitriol of Sol, boil it well in distilled rain water, stirring it continually with some sort of spatula. Then the sulphur of gold rises up to the surface like grease, which remove with a spoon. So also proceed with other vitriol. After the sulphur is taken away, evaporate that rain water to perfect dryness, and the vitriol of Sol will remain at the bottom. This you can easily resolve on marble in a damp place. In these two arcana, that is to say, the vitriol of gold and the sulphur of gold, a diaphoretic virtue is latent. However, we will not describe those virtues here, because we have sufficiently indicated them in the book on Metallic Diseases and elsewhere.
The mortification of sulphur consists in taking away its combustible and fœtid fatness, and reducing it to a fixed substance. This is accomplished in the following way: Take common yellow sulphur, reduced to a fine powder, and abstract from it the very acrid aqua fortis by a threefold distillation. Afterwards sweeten the sulphur which remains at the bottom, and is of a black colour, with sweet water, repeating the process of distillation continually until nothing but sweet water proceeds from it and there is no more smell of sulphur. Reverberate this sulphur in a closed reverberatory, as in the case of antimony. Then it will become, at first white, afterwards, yellow; thirdly, red
- ↑ Artificial acids are from the minerals of metals and cognate substances. But note here that what is usually called vitriolated acid is really vitriolated copper of Venus. For copper is vitriol. If, therefore, the acidity be extracted from copper, then he who uses it digests copper. It is the same with all the other vitriolates of metals . . . In all metals there are vitriolated acids, except in gold, which does not know vitriol.—De Morbis Tartareis, c. 16.
