8/10/2019 Dr. Anthony's Aurum Potabile
1/2
Gold calx seems to be what you say, an opened dust of gold, it
can also be done with aqua regia.How would one make a gold
calx?
Dissolve gold in aqua regia and evaporate it to crystals, add
water and precipitate with potassium
carbonate.
Dissolve pure fine gold in aqua regis according to art (the aqua
regis being made of a pound of
aqua fortis and four ounces of salt armoniac distilled together
by retort in sand) which clear
solution put into a large glass of a wide neck and upon it pour
drop by drop oil of tartar made perdeliquium, until the aqua aegis
which before was yellow becomes clear and white, for that is a
sign that all calx of gold is settled to the bottom. Then let it
stand all night, and in the morning
pour off the clear liquor, and wash the calx four or five times
with common spring water, being
warmed, and dry it with a most gentle heat.
Note, and that well, that if the heat be too great, the calx
takes fire presently like gun powder and
flies away to your danger and loss. Therefore, it is best to dry
it in the sun, or on a stone, stirringit diligently with a wooden
spatule. To this calx add half a part of the powder of sulphur.
Mix
them together, and in an open crucible let the sulphur burn away
in the fire, putting a gentle fire
to it at the first, and in the end a most strong fire for the
space of an hour so that the calx may insome manner be reverberated
and become most subtle, which keep in a vial close stopped foryour
use.
Then make a spirit of urine after this manner. Take the urine of
a healthy man drinking winemoderately. Put it into a gourd which
you must stop close, and set in horse dung for the space of
forty days. Then distill it by alembic in sand into a large
receiver until all the humidity be
distilled off. Rectify this spirit by cohobation three times so
that the spirit only may rise. Then
distill it in sand by a glass with a long neck having a large
receiver annexed and closed very wellto it, and the spirit will be
elevated into the top of the vessel like crystal without any
aqueous
humidity accompanying of it. Let this distillation be continued
until all the spirits be risen. These
crystals must be dissolved in distilled rain water and be
distilled as before. This must be done sixtimes and every time you
must take fresh rain water distilled. Then put these crystals into
a glass
bolt head, close hermetically, and set in the moderate heat of a
balneum for the space of fifteen
days so that they may be reduced into a most clear liquor. To
this liquor add an equal weight ofspirit of wine, very well
rectified, and let them be digested in balneum the space of twelve
days,
in which time they will be united.
Then take the calx of gold above said, and pour upon it of these
united spirits as much as will
cover them three fingers breadth. Digest them in a gentle heat
until the liquor be tinged as red asblood. Decant off the tincture
and put on more of the aforesaid spirits and do as before until
all
the tincture be extracted. Then put all the tincted spirits
together and digest them ten or twelvedays, after which time
abstract the spirit with a gentle heat and cohobate it once. And
then the
calx will remain in the bottom like an oil as red as blood and
of a pleasant odor, and which will
be dissolved in any liquor. Wherefore this oil may be the
succedaneum of true gold. If you distill
the same solution by retort in sand there will come over after
the first part of the menstruum thetincture with the other part
thereof, as red as blood, the earth which is left in the bottom of
the
