The Sceptical Chymist: or Chymico-Physical Doubts & Paradoxes, Touching the Spagyrist's Principles Commonly call'd Hypostatical; As they are wont to be Propos'd and Defended by the Generality of Alchymists. Whereunto is præmis'd Part of another Discourse relating to the same Subject.Boyle, Robert
Philosophy
The Sceptical Chymist: or Chymico-Physical Doubts & Paradoxes, Touching the Spagyrist's Principles Commonly call'd Hypostatical; As they are wont to be Propos'd and Defended by the Generality of Alchymists. Whereunto is præmis'd Part of another Discourse relating to the same Subject.
Boyle, Robert
Chemistry -- Early works to 1800
the Figures of these or other Saline Crystals (if I may so call Them)
will be alwaies the same, whatever degree of Fire have been employ'd
to force them up, or how hastily soever they have been made to convene
in the spirits or liquors, in the lower part of which I have usually
observ'd them after a while to shoot. And although, as I lately told
You, I seldom found any Difference, as to Medical Vertues, in the fixt
Salts of Divers Vegetables; and accordingly I have suspected that most
of these volatile Salts, having so great a Resemblance in smell, in
tast, and fugitiveness, differ but little, if at all, in their
Medicinal properties: As indeed I have found them generally to agree
in divers of them (as in their being somewhat Diaphoretick and very
Deopilative; [Errata: Deopilative)] Yet I remember _Helmont_[18]
somewhere informes us, that there is this Difference betwixt the
saline spirit of Urine and that of Mans blood, that the former will
not cure the Epilepsy, but the Latter will. Of the Efficacy also of
the Salt of Common Amber against the same Disease in Children, (for in
Grown Persons it is not a specifick) I may elsewhere have an Occasion
to Entertain You. And when I consider that to the obtaining of these
Volatile Salts (especially that of Urine) there is not requisite such
a Destructive Violence of the Fire, as there is to get those Salts
that must be made by Incineration, I am the more invited to conclude,
that they may differ from one another, and consequently recede from an
Elementary Simplicity. And, if I could here shew You what Mr. _Boyle_
has Observ'd, touching the Various Chymicall Distinctions of Salts;
You would quickly discern, not only that Chymists do give themselves a
strange Liberty to call Concretes Salts, that are according to their
own Rules to be look'd upon as very Compounded Bodies; but that among
those very Salts that seem Elementary, because produc'd upon the
Anatomy of the Bodies that yield them, there is not only a visible
Disparity, but, to speak in the common Language, a manifest Antipathy
or Contrariety: As is evident in the Ebullition and hissing that is
wont to ensue, when the Acid Spirit of Vitrioll, for Instance, is
pour'd upon pot ashes, or Salt of Tartar. And I shall beg leave of
this Gentleman, sayes _Carneades_, casting his Eyes on me, to let me
observe to You out of some of his papers, particularly those wherein
he treats of some Preparations of Urine, that not only one and the
same body may have two Salts of a contrary Nature, as he exemplifies
in the Spirit and _Alkali_ of Nitre; but that from the same body there
may without addition be obtain'd three differing and Visible Salts.
For He Relates, that he observ'd in Urine, not only a Volatile and
Crystalline Salt, and a fixt Salt, but likewise a kind of _Sal
Armoniack_, or such a Salt as would sublime in the form of a salt, and
therefore was not fixt, and yet was far from being so fugitive as the
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