The use of this most delicate Oil of Sulphur is not small both as to the metalline Operations and other Arts; and this so speedy a putrefaction and revivification of the dead Vegetables into a living medicine carries in its Intrails a great mystery.
LXV. It may be demanded, whether or no the Coles themselves are to be onely made use of for this revivification of the dead Vegetables, and not the green or dry Wood they are made of, and the Herbs too, may also be thus dealt with.
For answer, even the Herb it self, or the unburnt Wood it self may be changed in a Crucible into a red Stone by the Sal Mirabilis. For the operation tends to the same end be it Herb or Wood, green or dry, or made into a Cole.
LXVI. It may be queried, what Wood or what Herb being changed after that same manner by the Sal Mirabilis, yields the most excellent Medicine.
For answer, the Woods that are weightiest do excel all others; for they are riper and have in them a better Sulphur, than those Woods or those Herbs have which are lighter, and grow up in half a years time, the older the Trees are, the more fit for medicine they are; such as are the Roots of Vines, Juniper, Box, Beech, Oak, Cedar, and such like.
LXVII. A Demonstration, that out of dead Herbs and such as are again restored to life, may new Herbs be produced without the addition of the Seed of other Herbs.
Fill some Pots with some Fertile Earth or Clay, void of all Herbs or Seeds, and moisten it with the green or white Juice of the Coals. If now you expose these to the Sun and Rain, there will spring up thencefrom divers new and unknown Herbs.
LXVIII. How by the help of Sal Mirabilis, Metals are to be dissolved by the dry way, and to be converted into most excellent Medicaments, and first of Gold.
When you would make your trial of Gold take a piece of golden Money, and bow it, and add thereunto so much Sal Mirabilis as may be 5, 6, or 8 times the weight of the Gold. Melt it in a Wind Furnace, and pour it out into a Vessel fit for to receive molten Metals; and you shall find your Salt to be of a purple Colour. If all the Gold should not be dissolved but some part thereof should settle to the bottom, separate that Regulus from the purple Salt, and dissolve your remaining Gold in a Crucible with new Sal Mirabilis, that so all the Gold being dissolved may colour the Salt with a purple Colour. With this purple Salt may be performed many very profitable things, which appertain not to this place. ’Mongst which those are chiefest which respect the emendation or bettering of Metals, concerning which, I will here add onely one Operation.