Argentum vivum

Minium [he says], is an ore. During the digging, it sheds tears of quicksilver which the miners collect and save. The masses of ore as taken from the mine are so full of moisture that they are thrown into a furnace or oven in the laboratory to dry, and the fumes that are driven off from them by the heat of the fire, settle down on the floor of the oven and are found to be quicksilver (argentum vivum). When the lumps of ore are taken out, the drops which remain are so small that they cannot he gathered up, but they are swept into a vessel of water, and there they run together and combine into one. ... 

ARGENTUM VIVUM — is the chemical term for Mercury. It is simply a viscous water, in the bowels of the earth, of a subtle substance, having the nature of white earth, made one with a perfect union, up to the last point and particle, until that which is humid is modified by that which is dry, and the dry again by the humid, until the whole is absolutely homogeneous. Also Vivific Silver, i.e., the philosophical substance which is to be distinguished from common quicksilver, is the complementary part of the stone of the philosophers, as the chemists tell us the second principle, the mother of all the metals, and in proportion as it copulates with their father, the male sulphur, it engenders perfection and imperfection in metals, and when it predominates the metals (like a foetus) derive more from the mother than the father. Into that also from which they most originate are they most resolved. Now quicksilver is twofold-natural and artificial. 

And this white gold is called by the philosophers "luna alba philosophorum, argentum vivum album fixum, aurum alchymiae, and fumus albus" [white philosophical silver, white fixed mercury, alchemical gold and white (something)] and therefore without this our antimonial vinegar, the aurum... 

Now, there must occur a new steeping with the aqua secunda or the Spiritu volatili, that means, with the white Argentum vivum, as it was done before with the Spirit of Vinegar. 

There is another metal, zinc, which is in general unknown. It is a distinct metal of a different origin, though adulterated with many other metals. It can be melted, for it consists of three fluid principles, but it is not malleable. In its color it is unlike all others, and does not grow in the same manner but with its ultima materia I am as yet unacquainted, for it is almost as strange in its properties as argentum vivum (mercury). It admits no mixture, will not bear the fabrications of other metals, but keeps itself entirely to itself. 

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