the action of the Distill’d Vinager and the Saturnine Calx one upon another, part of the Liquor may be so alter’d as to be transmuted from an Acid Spirit into an Oyle. And though the truth of either of the two former conjectures would make the example I have reflected on more pertinent to my present argument; yet you’l easily discern, the Third and last Conjecture cannot be unserviceable to confirm some other passages of my discourse.
To return then to what I was saying just before I mention’d Helmont’s Experiment, I shall subjoyne, That Chymists must confess also that in the perfectly Dephlegm’d spirit of Wine, or other Fermented Liquors, that which they call the Sulphur of the Concrete loses, by the Fermentation, the Property of Oyle, (which the Chymists likewise take to be the true Sulphur of the Mixt) of being unminglable with the Water. And if You will credit Helmont,Ostendi alias, quomodo lib. una aquæ vitæ combibita in sale Tartari siccato, vix fiat semuncia salis, cæterum totum corpus fiat aqua Elementalis. Helmont. in Aura vitali. all of the purest Spirit of Wine may barely by the help of pure Salt of Tartar (which is but the fixed Salt of Wine) be resolv’d or Transmuted into scarce half an ounce of Salt, and as much Elementary Water as amounts to the remaining part of the mention’d weight. And it may (as I think I formerly also noted) be doubted, whether that Fixt and Alcalizate Salt, which is so unanimously agreed on to be the Saline Principle of incinerated Bodies, be not, as ’tis Alcalizate, a Production of the Fire? For though the tast of Tartar, for Example, seem to argue that it contains a Salt before it be burn’d, yet that Salt being very Acid is of a quite Differing Tast from the Lixiviate Salt of Calcin’d Tartar. And though it be not truly Objected against the Chymists, that they obtain all Salts they make, by reducing the Body they work on into Ashes with Violent Fires, (since Hartshorn, Amber, Blood, and divers other Mixts yield a copious Salt before they be burn’d to Ashes) yet this Volatile Salt Differs much, as we shall see anon, from the Fixt Alcalizate Salt I speak of; which for ought I remember is not producible by any known Way, without Incineration. ’Tis