Alembic stills

Brenn-barkeit, /. combustibility, -blase, /, alembic, still, -cylinder, m. (Pharm.) moxa. -dauer, /. burning time or period (of lamps, etc.) life. 

FIGURE 119. A nice shelf of mid Seventeenth-cenmry glassware and an efficient-looking double alembic (still head) that allows the entire apparatus to be lifted off of the furnace when such control is desired (from Le Fevre s A Compendious Body of Chymistry). 

Figure 3.3 Chemical apparatus illustrated in Lemery s Cours de Chymie of 1675. The distillation apparatus at the bottom right is equipped with a Moor s head. This surrounds the alembic (still head) and is filled with cold water to bring about more efficient condensation...

You break vials, and consume coals, only to soften your brains still more with the vapours. You also digest alum, salt, orpiment, and altrament you melt metals, build small and large furnaces, and use many vessels nevertheless I am sick of your folly, and you suffocate me with your sulphurous smoke. You would do better to mind your own business, than to dissolve and distil so many absurd substances, and then to pass them through alembics, cucurbits, stills, and pelicans."... 

There are many different forms of vessel described and depicted in the alchemical literature and emblematic engravings. There are a seeming multiplicity of forms of retort, pelicans, water baths, alembics, cucurbites, stills, etc. However, in the interior work we will find that all these different outer manifestations of the apparatus reduce to three archetypal forms - which we can call the CRUCIBLE, the RETORT and the STILL. 

The room was dark and unoccupied, but the poisons I had brought back the previous evening still sat in full view on the desk. Both Gerolamo the herbalist and Danielle the apothecary had warned me to be careful with those. Sciara made a methodical circuit of the room, starting at the alchemical workbench with its mortars and alembics, lingering to look at the scores of jars on shelves above it. 

The Arabs were the perfecters if not the inventors of the art of distillation, in which a liquid is converted into a vapor by boiling, and then condensed back into a liquid by cooling. The aim of distillation is purification. The alchemists developed different vessels for the distillation process. The lower part of a still, the apparatus used for distillation, is called a cucurbit the liquid is heated in this container. The upper part, where the heated vapor condenses again, is the alembic. The receiver for the distilled liquid is the aludel... 

In other districts where the wines have a strong, earthy flavor somewhat more elaborate apparatus is used. The La Rochelle district uses the Alembic des lies which is a pot still with rectifying equipment. The Midi uses a continuous distilling column of the kind in favor in this country, excepting that it is equipped with a faucet or tap at each plate. This arrangement enables the operator to distil at higher or lower strengths at will. 

Beyond them, in a courtyard, we see two alchemists at work (Figure 36) a man in a gold robe and blue cap holds an alembic, while a workman dressed in blue fills a vessel with the distillate from a large retort or still, contained within a square oven. Here again we see harmony, this time between the philosophical alchemist and the puffer, the alchemist s assistant, whose frequent task was to use the bellows to raise the temperature of the fire, in the belief that transmutation would proceed more easily at higher temperatures. (We saw this in Plate 1-11. The term also was used disparagingly to refer to naive alchemists who believed they could learn to make ordinary gold.54)... 

Aicaiine salt af tartar, potassium carbonate. See also sal tartre. Alembic, stilUhcadf or upper part of a still (also limbeck, or helm,... 

Cucurbit The main body of a still. See 13 A. A vessel or flask for dlStlUa tlon. used with, or forming part of an alembic matrass. 

The idea here is that metals can be dissolved most easily if they have been reduced into a fine powder by calcination. The particles that result are so fine that they are almost atomic—quasi atonws. A similar reference to atoms occurs when Sennert discusses the alchemical process of sublimation, whereby a dry substance is vaporized and then recondensed in a sort of still called an alembic. Here Sennert again takes a corpuscularian explanation from Geber and compares it to an outright atomistic one he says that the condensed particles collect on the side of the alembic in the manner of atoms imtar atomoruni) One can see, then, that Sennert in 1611 was fully aware of the advantages of corpuscular explanations, but that he was not yet willing to identify himself with the school... 

Other laboratory operations performed by the Alexandrian alchemists included solution, filtration, crystallisation, sublimation, and distillation. The art of distillation shows a steady improvement over the years. In the earliest form of distillation apparatus, the vapours ascending fi om the flask or bikos were condensed in the hood or ambix, and then ran down the spout into the receiver (Figure 2.4). The Arabs later used the name alembic for the condensing hood. This method of condensation was inefficient, and it was not until much later that water-cooled condensers were introduced. The alchemists employed several different kinds of furnace, and also introduced the sand bath and water bath for heating purposes. The water bath is reputed to have been invented by one of Zosimos s predecessors called Maria the Prophetess or Maria the Jewess. Today, when a pan of hot water is used to heat another vessel in the kitchen, the contrivance is still called a bain -Marie. 

The idea of improving the still-head is by no means a new one, for in a book entitled Philosophorum, scu liber de Secretis Natures, by Philip Ulstadius, 1563, there is an illustration of a five-headed still (Fig. 34). When dilute spirit was distilled through this alembic it is clear that the alcohol collected in the uppermost receiver must have been considerably stronger than that in the lowest. 

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