CHAPTER XI.

Concerning Dry Salt, There are various species of dry Salts, such as the common sort used with food, that from gems, stones, and earths, and that which comes through the cones of congelated bodies. Note the common virtue of each. If any one of them be mixed with Sulphur and applied to w^ounds as a plaster, and then as a lotion, it keeps them from worms, and even if the worms have already been produced, it drives them awav and prevents any more from coming. By
H2
icx) The Hermetic and Alchemical Writings of Parcuelsus.
cleansing alone, and without the use of any medicament, Nature heals wounds, unless any complication prove an obstacle to the free action of the natural balsam. In Salts of this kind is a great remedy for ulcers, scabies, and the like, if they are resolved in baths. The power of Muria is much stronger, and this can be increased by dissolving Salt in it. The same is useful for curing baldness, and other ailments of that kind, especially if these Salts are corrected by addition, or increased in power by the following method : Take equal quantities of dry Salt and Salt of Urine,* as much as you will, let them be calcined together for two hours, and let Muria afterwards be dissolved ; or let them be put by themselves in a cold, damp place. They will exhibit artificial Muria very little less strong than the natural in external surgical cases, but much weaker in internal cures. The aforesaid Salts will never be found in any other things, even though the alcali be decocted from them. This Salt is not like those before named, but is called the alcali of natural things or Corporeal Salt, because it is fed by the salts of nutriment in the human body, or by the preceding, even the dry and specially nutritive ones. For Alchemy, the Water of Salt is made from the same kind of Salts calcined into a spirit in a vessel where gold is dissolved into an oil and separated from it so that it remains excellent and potable— Drinkable Gold. Before it arrives at this final condition, as we have heard from jewellers and ironmasters, it is an excellent artifice for gilding silver or iron, and would be a constant treasure if they only knew how to prepare it chemically. It should be remarked, too, concerning pure Salt, congelated by Nature alone either into cones or into the salt of a gem, that this is particularly adapted for the ordinary cementations of silver, and renders the metal malleable without the customary burnings. It does the same with copper by means of a cement reduced to a regulus.