Alembic, the

Instrumentation was, for a long time, rather crude by today s standards the furnace, the alembic, the separatory funnel, the filter, the balance. .. crude and cheap. Today, no modern analytical laboratory is equipped without millions of pounds spent on investments in optical, mass and NMR spectrometers, in high performance chromatographs and in electro-analytical equipment. 

I SHOULD HAVE been glad to be alone. I should have enjoyed the tranquillity of the laboratory, the smell of sunlight on old wood, the meditation over the alembic, the opportunity to delve deep into near-impenetrable texts. Alchemy, after all, is altogether a safer and more predictable art than life. Alchemy involves no physical journeys, no interaction with living human beings. The alchemist suffers heartbreak and disappointment, but not often betrayal. 

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... 

This return corresponds to a different quality of regressive work, when the container provided by the analytic situation permits the experience of less differentiated states that are not to be confused with a return to a developmental experience of infancy. Furthermore, this regression must be contained and attended by the patient s ego, which has been tempered by the analytic work up to this point (symbolized by the alembic). The challenge for the patient and the analyst will be to contain but not mortally wound the young dragon, with its threat of madness and its essential but unchanneled vitality. 

In the Second Series, the symbols themselves are being transformed in the alembic The astrological signs and their associated patterns of behavior are more in the sphere of everyday life, which is also the province of clinical work. The interplay of images and ideas between the contents of the alembic and the surrounding scenes parallels the analyst s inner tension between two methods of analysis, the symbolic and the clinical. More and more we see the error of this dichotomy, since we are doing both all the time. You cannot work in only one way and do justice to an individual s need to develop psychic awareness. 

To Obtain Fluoric Acid. Tho anhydrous acid is made by distilling powdered fiuor-spar with twice its weight of oil of vitriol in a leaden, or better, a stiver alembic, the pipe of which fits into a bottle of tho same material, Burronnded with ice. But as it is usually required in a dilated state, water equal in weight to the spar may be put into the receiver. Great care must be men, as the acid, both in its gaseous and liquid form, is very destructive. 

In the book s next figure (Figure 87), the man and woman prepare the dew for distillation in an alembic. The man subsequently takes the distillate and pours it into four vessels that are heated, apparently for 40 days. The woman removes the residue from the distillation vessel and spoons it into a bottle that she gives to an old man, holding a child and bearing the mark of Luna. Some interpret the old man as Saturn. 

By the thirteenth century AD, essential oils were being produced along with medicinal and herbal preparations in pharmacies. Around this time improvements in distillation techniques were made, in particular the development of the alembic apparatus, which would eventually estabUsh the quaUty of such matenals. As a result, many of the essential oils in use today are denved from those produced in the sixteenth and seventeenth centunes in terms of odor character, even though production methods have continued to evolve. The current practice of aroma therapy is an indication of this common root of medicinal and fragrance chemistry. 

Y. Aiaten, A. Baniel, and R. Blumbeig, Potassium Nitrate, Pioceedings No. 99, The Eeitihsei Society, Alembic House, London, Oct. 1967. 

Egyptians purportedly practiced distillation around 1000—2000 BC by heating wine and making a product called arden spidts. China and India are also said to have carried out distillation in the pre-Christian era. The Chinese reportedly made a distilled beverage from nee beer around 800 BC. The Arabs learned about distillation from the Egyptians and developed an apparatus in the form of a closed heated container that was called an alembic. 

In a manner comparable to Christian eschatology, alchemical literature insisted on its own purificatory rituals that involved the preliminary torture, death and dismemberment of the prima materia. The canonical Catholic depiction of Christ s sacrificed body was a primary source for sixteenth and seventeenth century illustrations of the tortured body in anatomical and alchemical publications. In eflfect, the practice of Paracelsian alchemical medicine and surgery had a sacramental connotation, since the physician acted on the human body in the same manner as God worked on the great universal Macrocosmic Body. In like manner, the Paracelsian physician introduced the universal panacea, a liquid form of the philosopher s stone, into the alchemical alembic that was the Microcosmic human body. This alchemical medicine was permeated with the starry virtues of the heavens and the grace of Christ s Spirit, redeeming the body and soul of the patient by granting him not only an extended life on earth, but even eternal salvation. 

Kieley, Robert S. "The architect in the alembic Chemistry, neoplatonism, and religion in 17th century English generation theory." PhD thesis, Northwestern Univ., 1996. 

Linden, Stanton J. The breaking of the alembic patterns in alchemical imagery in English Renaissance poetry. WascanaRev 8 (1974) 105-113. 

Flashes of light passed before Auriols eyes, and strange noises smote his ears. The furnace breathed forth flames and mephitic vapors the spiral worm of the alembic became red hot, and seemed filled with molten lead the skeletons grinned and gibbered the bald decapitated head opened its eyes, and fixed them with a stony glare, on the... 

The solution is cooled to room temperature and is washed with a few milliliters of benzene into a single-necked flask. The solvent is removed with a rotary evaporator connected to a water aspirator vacuum gentle heat is supplied from a steam bath. The residue is cooled to room temperature before air is admitted. About 200 ml. of hexane is added and stirred with the residue to extract most of the carborane. The brownish tar which remains undissolved is allowed to settle and the solution is decanted. A second extraction of the tar with 40 ml. of hexane converts the residue to a solid which is removed by filtration. The solid is washed on the filter with an additional 40 ml. of hexane. The combined hexane extracts are filtered and then washed in a separatory funnel with four 100-ml. portions of a chilled aqueous 10% sodium hydroxide solution, followed by four 100-ml. portions of water. After the yellow hexane solution has been dried over anhydrous magnesium sulfate and filtered, the solvent is removed by use of a rotary evaporator connected to a water aspirator. The carborane is washed with a small amount of pentane into a 300-ml. single-necked flask which is attached to an alembic column as pictured in Fig. 13. 

Glass wool is placed in the solution, in the neck of the alembic distillation column, and at the top of the column to inhibit bumping during the distillation. 

Some sources give the date as 1804. Gay-Lussac read these now famous results before the Philomathic Society in 1808, which were published in 1809, in Gay Lussac, J.L., Memoir on the Combination of Gaseous Substances with Each Other. Memories de la Societe d Arcueil 2, 207-34. An English translation of this document, published by Henry A. Boorse and Lloyd Motz, eds., The World of the Atom, Vol. 1. New York Basic Books, 1966 (translation Alembic Club Reprint No. 4), can be found at http //webserver.lemoyne.edu/faculty/giunta/ gaylussac.html. 

Avogadro, A. 1811. Essay on a Manner of Determining the Relative Masses of the Elementary Molecules of Bodies, and the Proportions in Which They Enter into These Compounds. J. Physi. 73, 58-76. [Alembic Club Reprint No. 4] Translated paper available online at http // webserver.lemoyne.edu/faculty/giunta/avogadro.htinl. 

The most perfect alembic in which the Quintessence can be elaborated is conformable to this figure, and the Quintessence itself is represented by the Sign of the Pentagram. 

The most famous work of "chemical philosophy" in the second half of the nineteenth century is Stanislao Cannizzaro, "Sketch of a Course of Chemical Philosophy" (1858 Edinburgh Alembic Club reprint 18, 1947), in which he argues the identity of the chemical and physical atom. 

A. W. Williamson, "Results of a Research on Etherification" and "Suggestions for a Dynamics of Chemistry Derived from the Theory of Etherification," reprinted in Papers on Etherification and on the Constitution of Salts (Edinburgh Alembic Club Reprints, 1929), no. 16, 517, 1824. See J. R. Partington, A History of Chemistry, 580, 672. 

See Kragh, "Between Physics and Chemistry," 27 and Barkan, "Walther Nemst," 158159, drawing on a letter from Ostwald to Nerst, 22 November 1892, Ostwald Papers, AAW, Berlin. The views at issue are found in J. H. van t Hoff, "Role of Osmotic Pressure in the Analogy between Solutions and Gases" (1887) and Svante Arrhenius, "On the Dissociation of Substances in Aqueous Solution" (1887), in The Foundations of the Theory of Dilute Solution (Edinburgh Alembic Club, 1929), no. 19. 

Arrhenius, Svante. "On the Dissociation of Substances in Aqueous Solution (1887)." In The Foundations of the Theory of Dilute Solution. Edinburgh Alembic Club, 1929. 

That night I cleaned half the wall of books and the alchemy bench. I do not lift out the books— that takes me a couple of days when the Maestro decides it needs doing—so the bookshelves are little problem. But all the mortars, pestles, beakers, funnels, alembics, and other vessels have to be polished, all the reagent bottles wiped and their shelves also, so by the time I had come around to the door, it was too late to go any further. 

Fig. X. p. 85, represents methods of distilling with an apparatus for cooling the volatile products the lower vessel is an alembic, with a long neck, the upper part of which passes through a vessel containing cold water.

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."... 

The spermatic fluid of a man should be enclosed in an alembic for forty days, and left to putrefy until it starts to live and to move about, which is easy to see. Soon after this, there will appear a form resembling that of a man but it must be kept moderately and carefully for forty days and at a heat constantly equivalent to that of a horse s belly. After which time, it becomes a real living child, complete with all its members, just like the child born of a woman, only much smaller. ... 

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