Out of stones which are found in grapes, there may be distilled a sowre spirit, which is a certain and specifical remedy for the stone in the kidneys and bladder, and also for all pains of the gout. It is not onely to be used internally, but also externally, wetting clothes in it, and applying them to the places affected, and it will asswage and drive away the pains.
Of the spirit or acid oyl of Sulphur.
To reduce sulphur into a sowre spirit or oyl hath been sought hitherto by many, but found by few. Most of them made it in glass-bells, but got very little that way; for the glasses being quickly hot, could not hold the oyl, so that it went away in a smoak. Some thought to get it by distilling, others by dissolving, but none of all these would do the feat. Which is the reason why now-adayes it is found almost no where right, and in the Drugsters and Apothecaries shops they usually sell oyl of Vitriol instead of it, which by far is not to be compared in vertue to the oyl of sulphur. For this is not onely of a far pleasanter sowre taste, but in efficacy also much exceeds the other. And therefore being of so great use both in Physick and Alchymy, as in all hot diseases, mingling the patients drink therewith, till it get a pleasant sowre tast, for to quench the intolerable drowth, to strengthen the stomach, to refresh the lungs and the liver: Also externally for to cure the gangreen: Also for to Chrystallise some metals thereby, and to reduce them into pleasant vitriols, useful as well in Alchymy as Physick: I thought good to set down the preparation, though it be not done in this our distilling furnace, but in another way by kindling and burning it as followeth.
Make a little furnace with a grate, upon which a strong crucible must be fastned resting on two iron bars, and it is to be ordered so that the smoak be conveighed (not above by the crucible, but) through a pipe at the side of the furnace: the crucible must be filled with sulphur even to the top; and by a coal-fire without flame be brought to burn and kept burning. Over the burning sulphur, a vessel is to be applyed of good stony earth like unto a flat dish with an high brim, wherein is alwayes cold water to be kept, and whereunto the burning sulphur doth flame: which thus burning, its fatness consumeth, and the acid last is freed and sublimed to the cold vessel, where it is dissolved by the air, and in the form of a sharp oyl runs from the hollow vessel into the receiver, which must be taken off sometime, and more sulphur supplyed instead of that which hath been consumed, to the end that the sulphur may still burn in the crucible: and beat with the flame to the cold head: and within few dayes you will get a great quantity of oyl, which else by the (campana) glass-bell in many weeks could not have been done.
N. B. Such a sowre spirit or oyl may also be got by distillation together with the flores, viz. thus: If you take pieces of sulphur as big as hens eggs, and cast them one after another into the hot distilling vessel, a sowre oyl together with flores, will come over into the receiver, which must with water be separated out of the flores, and the water abstracted from it again in a cucurbit, and in the bottome of your glass body you will find the oyl, which in vertue and taste is equal to the former, but you get nothing near so much in quantity by this way, and if you do not look for the oyl, you may leave it with the flores, which by reason of their pleasant acid taste are much toothsomer to take than the ordinary ones.
To the Courteous Reader.
Thus I conclude this second part; I could have set down more medicinal processes in this Treatise: but having as many as will be a sufficient guide for the distilling of other things also, I thought it good here to acquiesce; and whatsoever hath been here omitted, shall be supplyed in the following parts.
FINIS.
