Distillation recipes for solvent waters
Alchemical notes on tartar, gums, and lees for making dissolving waters
This page holds a set of alchemical recipes for producing 'solvent waters' by distillation. Dried blood distilled gives a powerful but poisonous dissolving distillate; burned tartar made into lye with wine, vinegar, or distilled urine yields a strongly dissolving alkaline solution (capitello) that, distilled again, becomes a solvent water. Further notes treat burned vinegar lees, gums dissolved and then washed in aqua vitae to strip out their salt, and dried verjuice lees, each distilled to make a dissolving water. The only apparatus named is a 'resistant alembic' (lembicco); the whole folio is text, without a drawing.
On this page
Burned tartar turned to lye, then distilled into a solvent
Tartar burned and at once made into lye with wine, vinegar, or distilled urine gives a very dissolving alkaline solution, which distilled again yields a solvent water. Burned in a resistant alembic, tartar likewise makes a dissolving distillate. Burned vinegar lees, put through the same treatment, also make a solvent water.
Dried blood, gums, and verjuice lees; a poison warning
Dried blood, distilled, makes a powerful and strongly dissolving distillate, but it is poison. Gums dissolved into alkaline solutions and washed in aqua vitae give up their salt, which departs with the aqua vitae. The lees of verjuice, dried first and then distilled, make a dissolving water.