To make the Salt and Elixir of the Stone and Bladder.
IT is a wonder of Nature, that the very same thing which causes in Man such extremities of torture, ••ould become to the same disease so good and certain a remedy: this is experimented in the Stone of the Bladder, which without any other preparation than being reduced to small Powder, may be administred from ℈ i. to ʒ i. in white Wine, or decoction of Burredock Roots and red Nettles, to dissolve the Stone in the Bladder, and expel gra∣vel and slime from it and from the Kidneys: but those Re∣medies being heightened by Chymical preparation, are much more efficacious, and do act with a much greater quickness.
Take then a parcel of these Stones, reduce them to powder, and joyn with 2. pintes of Beach Goal pulverised, and thus be∣ing put in a well luted Crucible, calcine it with a circular or rever∣beratory fire, the space of five or six hours; and being cooled, grind your matter upon a Marble, and, with some diuretical Wa∣ter make a Lye thereof; o•, with Phlegm of Salt-Peter, or Al∣lom, filtrate and evaporate till it skins; then in a cold place draw your Crystals, and so continue to do, till you have extracted all the Salt; which if you find not yet sufficiently cleansed, put it again in a Crucible, and let it grow red-hot in the fire without fusion, then purifie by reiterated solutions, filtrations, evapora∣tions and crystallizations, until you like it. You must keep this Salt well dryed, in a Glass Viol well stopt, lest by the attra∣ction of Air, it should contract moisture. The dosis is from iv. grains to viij. in appropriated Liquors, to facilitate the excreti∣on of Urin, dissolve and expel the gravel and slimy matter in the Reins and Bladder, which most commonly are the occasional cause of generating the Stone.
But if you will have an Essence or Elixir out of it much more efficatious then this Salt, calcine the Stone with equal weight of well purified Salt-Peter in a Crucible with a circular fire, the space of six hours; then extract the Salt from the matter calcinated, with Spirit of Wine, filtrate, evaporate, and draw your Crystals, and when they are well desiccated, put them to digest in a double Vessel in Baelnei vapore, with rectified Spirit of Wine: then co∣ver Page 137it with a head, and draw the Spirit of Wine in a gentle Bal∣neo, and cohobate so often, till the Salt be reduced to a very sub∣tile and clear Liquor, which you are choysely to preserve; it must be given from five drops to ten, for the same Diseases, and in the same Liquors before mentioned.
The Artist must not scruple to make use of Nitre in the Calci∣nation of the Stone of the Bladder, lest its Salt should joyn with the other•: for, besides that all, what is volatile, sharp and corrosive in the Nitre, flyes away in the calcination, that sub∣stance of it which remains after the Stone is calcined, can but augment the efficacy of the Remedy, then lessen or obstruct it, being reduced by the action of the fire to the universal nature.
Having thus ended to treat of those things, which are ex∣tracted from Man's body during its life; we will end this Chapter by examining those Sustances which his Body may afford after death; beginning with the Flesh, which doth furnish us with several con∣siderable preparations, as in the sequel will appear.
