As soon as you have conveighed it into the vessel, shut the door, and the gunpowder will kindle, and give a blast that it maketh the receiver stir, and a white mist or steam will come over into the receiver. As soon as the powder is burnt, you may cast in more before the mist is settled, because else the distilling of it would cost too much time, and so you may continue to do until you have spirit enough. Then let the fire go out, and the furnace grow cool, and then take off the receiver, pour the spirit with the water that was poured in before (the flores being first every where washed off with it) out of the receiver into a glass body, and rectifie it in a B. through a limbeck, and there will come over a muddy water, tasting and smelling of sulphur: which you must keep. In the glass body you will find a white salt, which you are to keep likewise. Take out the Caput Mortuum, which remained in the distilling vessel, and looks like gray salt, calcine it in a covered crucible, that it turn white, but not that it melt; and upon this burnt or calcined salt, pour your stinking water, which came over through the limbeck, and dissolve the calcined white salt with it, and the feces which will not dissolve cast away. Filtre the solution, and pour it upon the white salt, which remained in the glass body, from which the sulphureous spirit was abstracted before, and put the glass body (with a limbeck luted upon it) into sand, and abstract the sulphureous water from it, which will be yellowish, and smell more of sulphur than it did before. This water if it be abstracted from the salt several times, will turn white, almost like unto milk, and tast no more of sulphur, but be pleasant and sweet. It is very good for the diseases of the lungs. Also it doth guild silver, being anointed therewith, although not firmly, and by digestion it may be ripened and reduced into a better medicine.
The salt which remained in the glass body, urge with a strong fire, such as will make the sand, wherein the glass standeth red hot, and there will sublime a white salt into the limbeck, in taste almost like unto salt Armoniack, but in the midst of the glass body, you will find another, which is yellowish, of a mineral taste and very hot upon the tongue.
The sublimed salts, as well the white which did ascend into the limbeck, as the yellow, which remained in the glass body are good to be used in the plague, malignant feavers and other diseases, where sweating is required; for they do mightily provoke sweating, they comfort and do cleanse the stomach, and cause sometimes gentle stools.
But what further may be done in Physick with it, I do not know yet.
In Alchymy it is also of use, which doth not belong to this place. Upon the remaining salt which did not sublime you may pour rain water, and dissolve it there in the glass body, (if it be whole still) else if it be broken, you may take out the salt dry, and dissolve and filtre and coagulate it again, and there will be separated a great deal of fæces. This purified salt, which will look yellowish, melt in a covered crucible, and it will turn quite blood red, and as hot as fire upon the tongue, which with fresh water you must dissolve again, and then filtre and coagulate; by which operation it will be made pure and clear, and the solution is quite green before it be coagulated, and as fiery as the red salt was before its dissolution.
This grass green solution being coagulated again into a red fiery salt, may be melted again in a clean and strong crucible, and it will be much more red and fiery.
N. B. And it is to be admired that in the melting of it many fire sparks do fly from it, which do not kindle or take fire, as other sparks of coals or wood use to do. This well purified red salt being laid in a cold and moist place, will dissolve into a blood red oyl, which in digestion dissolveth gold and leaveth the silver: this solution may be coagulated, and kept for use in Alchimy.
There may also a pretious Tincture be extracted out of it with alcolized spirit of wine, which Tincture guildeth silver, but not firmly.
And as for use in Physick, it ought to be kept as a great Treasure. But if the red fiery salt be extracted with spirit of wine before gold be dissolved therewith, it will yield likewise a fair red Tincture, but not so effectual in Physick as that unto which gold is joyned. And this Tincture can also further be used in Alchymy, which belongeth not hither, because we only speak of medicaments.