There have nevertheless been some synonimous and more significant words used for the Alkahest. Van Helmont, the elder, mentions it by the compound name of ignis-aqua, fire-water: but he here seems to allude to the circulated liquor of Paracelsus, which he terms fire, from its property of consuming all things; and water, on account of its liquid form. The same author calls it liqoer Gehennæ, infernal fire; a word also used by Paracelsus. He also entitles it, “Summun et felicismum omnium salium,” “the highest and most successful of all salts; which having obtained the supreme degree of simplicity, purity, and subtilty, enjoys alone the faculty of remaining unchanged and unimpaired by the subjects it works upon, and of dissolving the most stubborn and untractable bodies; as stones, gems, glass, earth, sulphur, metals, &c. into real salt, equal in weight to the matter dissolved; and this with as much ease as hot water melts down snow.”—“This salt,” continues he, “by being several times cohabited with Paracelsus’, Sal circulatum, loses all its fixedness, and at length becomes an insipid water, equal in quantity to the salt it was made from.”
Van Helmont positively expresses that this salt is the product of art and not of nature. “Though, says he, a homogeneal part of elementary earth may be artfully converted into water, yet I deny that the same can be done by nature alone; for no natural agent is able to transmute one element into another.” And this he offers as a reason why the Elements always remain the same.
It may throw some light into this affair, to observe, that Van Helmont, as well as Paracelsus, took water for the universal instrument of chymistry and natural philosophy; and earth for the unchangeable basis of all things—that fire was assigned as the sufficient cause of all things—that seminal impressions were lodged in the mechanism of the earth—that water, by dissolving and fermenting with this earth, as it does by means of fire, brings forth every thing; whence originally proceeded the animal, vegetable, and mineral kingdoms: even man himself, according to Moses, was thus at first created.
The great characteristic or property of the Alkahest, as has already been observed, is to dissolve and change all sublunary bodies—water alone excepted.——The changes it induces proceed in the following manner, viz.
1. The subject exposed to its operation, is converted into its three principles, salt, sulphur, and mercury; and afterwards into salt alone, which then becomes volatile; and, at length, is wholly turned into insipid water.—The manner in which it is applied, is by touching the body proposed to be dissolved; e. g. gold, mercury, sand, glass, or the like, once or twice with the pretended alkahest; and if the liquor be genuine, the body will on this application be converted into its own quality of salt.
2. It does not destroy the seminal virtues of the bodies thereby dissolved.—For instance,—gold, by its action, is reduced to a salt of gold; antimony, to a salt of antimony; saffron, to a salt of saffron, &c. of the same seminal virtues, or characters with the original concrete. By seminal virtues, Van Helmont means those virtues which depend upon the structure or mechanism of a body, and which constitutes it what it actually is. Hence an actual and general aurum potabile might readily be gained by the alkahest, as converting the whole body of gold into salt, retaining its seminal virtues, and being withal soluble in water.
3. Whatever it dissolves may be rendered volatile by a sand-heat; and if, after volatilizing the solvent, it be distilled therefrom, the body is left pure insipid water, equal in quantity to its original self, but deprived of its seminal virtues. Then, if gold be dissolved by the Alkahest, the metal first becomes salt, which is potable gold; but when the menstruum, by a further application of fire, is distilled therefrom, it is left mere elementary water. Whence it appears, that pure water is the last production or effect of the alkahest.
4. It suffers no change or diminution of force by dissolving the bodies it works in; consequently sustains no reaction from them; being the only immutable menstruum in nature.
5. It is incapable of mixture, and therefore remains free from fermentation and putrefaction; coming off as pure from the body it has dissolved, as when first applied to it; without leaving the least foulness behind.