being plac'd in a Dunghill, the Putrefaction is wont after some weeks
so to open the Body, that the parts disbanding the Saline Spirit, will
within no very long time, if the Vessel be not stopt, fly away of it
self; Insomuch that from such Urine I have been able to distill little
or nothing else than a nauseous Phlegme, instead of the active and
piercing Salt and Spirit that it would have afforded, when first
expos'd to the Fire, if the Vessel had been carefully stopt.
And this leads me to consider in the Fifth place, That it will be very
hard to prove, that there can no other Body or way be given which
will as well as the Fire divide Concretes into several homogeneous
Substances, which may consequently be call'd their Elements or
Principles, as well as those separated or produc'd by the Fire. For
since we have lately seen, that Nature can successefully employ other
Instruments than the Fire to separate distinct Substances from mixt
Bodies, how know we, but that Nature has made, or Art may make, some
such Substance as may be a fit Instrument to Analyze mixt Bodies, or
that some such Method may be found by Humane Industry or Luck, by
whose means compound Bodies may be resolv'd into other Substances,
than such as they are wont to be divided into by the Fire. And why the
Products of such an _Analysis_ may not as justly be call'd the
component Principles of the Bodies that afford them, it will not be
easy to shew, especially since I shall hereafter make it evident, that
the Substances which Chymists are wont to call the Salts, and
Sulphurs, and Mercuries of Bodies, are not so pure and Elementary as
they presume, and as their _Hypothesis_ requires. And this may
therefore be the more freely press'd upon the Chymists, because
neither the _Paracelsians_, nor the _Helmontians_ can reject it
without apparent Injury to their respective Masters. For _Helmont_
do's more than once Inform his Readers, that both _Paracelsus_ and
Himself were Possessors of the famous Liquor, _Alkahest_, which for
its great power in resolving Bodies irresoluble by Vulgar Fires, he
somewhere seems to call _Ignis Gehennae_. To this Liquor he ascribes,
(and that in great part upon his own Experience) such wonders, that if
we suppose them all true, I am so much the more a Friend to Knowledge
than to Wealth, that I should think the _Alkahest_ a nobler and more
desireable Secret than the Philosophers Stone it self. Of this
Universal Dissolvent he relates, That having digested with it for a
competent time a piece of Oaken Charcoal, it was thereby reduc'd into
a couple of new and distinct Liquors, discriminated from each other by
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