A course of chemistry containing an easie method of preparing those chymical medicins which are used in physick : with curious remarks and useful discourses upon each preparation, for the benefit of such who desire to be instructed in the knowledge of this art / by Nicholas Lemery, M.D.

Tincture of Ambar.

This Operation is a solution of some oily parts of Ambar, made in Spirit of wine.

Reduce into an impalpable powder five or six ounces of yellow Ambar, and put it into a bolt∣head, pour upon it Spirit of wine to the height of four fingers, stop this bolthead with another, to make a double vessel, and having exactly luted the junctures with a wet bladder, place it in digestion in hot sand, and leave it there five or six dayes, or until the Spirit of wine is sufficiently tinged with the Ambar colour; decant this Tincture, and put more Spirit of wine to the matter, you must digest it as before, then having separated the im∣pregnation, mix it with the other: Filtrate them, and distil from them in an Alembick with a very little fire, about half the Spirit of wine, which may serve you as before; keep the Tincture that you will find at the bottom of the Alembick, in a Viol well stopt.

It is good for the Apoplexy, Palsie, Epilepsie, and for Hysterical women; the dose is from ten drops to a drachm in some proper liquor.

Remarks.

You must powder the Ambar finely, that the menstruum may open its body the better; this Tincture is nothing but the Sulphureous or oily part of Ambar, which Spirit of wine (a Sulphur) does become impregnated with: a liquor that were not sulphureous would perhaps dissolve the Ambar, but that which is dissolved by it would be the more impure; wherefore you must always use such a dissolvent as is of the same nature with the substance that you would dissolve.

Half the Spirit of wine is drawn off, to make the Tincture the stronger.