Of the Nitrous spirit of Arsenick.
If you take white Arsenick and pure salt nitre of each a like quantity ground into fine powder, and distill them, you will get a blew spirit, which is very strong, but no water must be put into the receiver, else it would turn white, for the Arsenick, from which the blew cometh, is precipitated by the water. This spirit dissolveth and graduateth copper as white as silver, and maketh it malleable but not fixed. The remaining Caput Mortuum maketh the copper white, if it be cemented therewith, but very brittle and unmalleable, but how to get good silver out of Asenick and with profit, you shall find in the fourth part. In physick the blew spirit serveth for all corroding cancrous sores, which if they be anointed therewith, will be killed thereby, and made fit for healing.
To make a spirit of Sulphur, crude Tartar and Salt nitre.
If you grind together one part of Sulphur, two parts of Crude Tartar, and four parts of salt nitre, and distill it Philosopher-like, you will get a most admirable spirit, which can play his part both in Physick and Alchymy. I will not advise any body to distill it in a retort; for this mixture, if it groweth warm from beneath, it fulminateth like Gunpowder; but if it be kindled from above, it doth not fulminate, but onely burneth away like a quick fire; metals may be melted and reduced thereby.
To make a spirit out of Salt of Tartar, Sulphur, and Salt-nitre.
If you take one part of salt of Tartar, and one part and a half of Sulphur, with three parts of salt nitre, and grind them together, you will have a commposition, which fulminateth like Aurum fulminans, and the same also (after the same manner as above hath been taught with gold) may be distilled into flores and spirits, which are not without special Vertue and Operation. For the corruption of one thing is the generation of another.
How to make a spirit of saw-dust, sulphur and salt nitre.
If you make a mixture of one part of Saw-dust made of Tilia or Linden-wood, and two parts of good sulphur, and nine parts of purified and well dryed salt nitre, and cast it in by little and little, there will come over an acid spirit, which may be used outwardly, for to cleanse wounds that are unclean. But if you mix with this composition minerals or metals made into fine powder, and then cast it in and distill it, there will come not only a powerful metallical spirit, but also a good quantity of flores, according to the nature of the mineral, which are of no small vertue: for the minerals and metals are by this quick fire destroyed and reduced to a better condition, whereof many things might be written: but it is not good to reveal all things. Consider this sentence of the Philosophers. It is impossible to destroy without a flame, The combustible Sulphur of the Calx, which the digged Mine doth doe.
Also fusible minerals and metals may not only be melted, therewith, but also cupellated in a moment upon a Table in the hand or in a nut-shell; whereby singular proofs of oares and metals may be made, and much better, than upon a Cupel, whereof further in the fourth part of this book. Here is opened unto us a gate to high things; if entrance be granted unto us, we shall need no more books to look for the Art in them.