A description of new philosophical furnaces, or A new art of distilling, divided into five parts. Whereunto is added a description of the tincture of gold, or the true aurum potabile; also, the first part of the mineral work. Set forth and published for the sakes of them that are studious of the truth. / By John Rudolph Glauber. Set forth in English, by J.F. D.M.

Of the spirit or acid oyle of Sulphur.

TO reduce sulphur into a sowre spirit or oyle hath been sought hitherto by many, but found by few. Most of them made it in glass-bels, but got very little that way; for the glasses being quickly hot, could not hold the oyle, 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 nowadayes it is found almost no where right and in the Drugsters and Apothecaries shops they usually sell oyle of Vitriol in stead of it, which by far is not to be compared in vertue to the oyle 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 Alchymie, as in all hot diseases, mingling the pa∣tients drink therewith, till it get a pleasant sowre taste, for to quench the intolerable drowth, to strengthen the stomach, to refresh the lungs and the liver: Also externally for to cure the gangrene: Also for to crystallise some metals thereby and to reduce them into pleasant vitriols, useful as well in Alchy∣mie 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, above which a strong crucible must be fastned resting on two iron bars, and it is to be ordered so that the smoake 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 cole-fire without flame be brought to burn and kept bur∣ning. Over the burning sulphur, a vessel is to be applyed of good stony earth like unto a flat dish with a high brim, where∣in

is alwayes cold water to be kept, and whereunto the bur∣ning sulphur do flame: Which thus burning its fatness con∣sumeth, and the acid salt is freed and sublimed to the cold ves∣sel, where it is dissolved by the aire, and in the form of a sharpe oyle runs from the hollow vessel into the receiver, which must be taken off sometime, and more sulphur supply∣ed in stead 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 oyle, which else by the (campana) glass-bell in many weeks could not have been done.

N. B. Such a sowre spirit or oyle may also be got by di∣stillation together with the flores, viz. thus: If you take pieces of sulphur as big as hens eggs, and carry them one after another into the hot distilling vessel, a sowre oyle 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 againe in a cucurbit and in the bottome of your glass body you will finde the oyle, which in vertue and taste is equal to the former, but you get nothing neer so much in quantity by this way, and if you do not look for the oyle, you may leave it with the flores, which by reason of their pleasant acid taste are much toothsomer to take then the ordinary ones.