A historic way to seal vessels tightly to preserve their contents
For years now I have been wanting to find evidence for how to seal containers in the medieval period. So Continue reading
distillatio
Medieval alchemy, chemistry related technology and random things distilled from books and artefacts
Latest posts
Athanor’s, what are they?
This post was inspired by the Turba philosophorum lecture on the 4th Feb 2022 An athanor is an alchemical furnace, Continue reading
Review of “The experimental Fire” by Jennifer Rampling
I am afraid that this review is 18 months late, due to running out of spoons in 2021 after moving Continue reading
A dyeing recipe that parallels an alchemical quintessence recipe
At the weekend I was browsing page 298 of Clarke’s The crafte of Lymming etc.. published by the Early English Continue reading
On what alchemy was and the gap in public knowledge of alchemy
My friend Ted put up a bit of a mischeivous twitter poll before Christmas, that asked: Let s settle this once Continue reading
Aqua Lunaris and Oleum Solis – by Richard Stanihurst
I was recently given a copy of a transcription and translation of the above named MS, done by Conleth Loonan. Continue reading
A review and expansion upon “Holy Alchemists, metallurgists and pharmacists: The material evidence for British Monastic Chemistry”
On twitter recently a new article with the above self explanatory title was mentioned, written by Christopher Booth and published Continue reading
Distillation by alchemists and for medicine
A commenter on this blog called aem was asking about distillation. I reckoned it was hard to come up with Continue reading
The use of distilled medicine in England in the early 15th century
Twitter is useful for finding out what others are researching. This is a good example: https://recipes.hypotheses.org/9489 A blog post from Continue reading
Turning lead into silver, part 1
Searching through the Ferguson Collection in Glasgow has been interesting, and turned up a variety of manuscripts related to my Continue reading