Experiment XLV
You may I presume (Pyrophilus) have taken notice, that in this whole Treatise, I purposely decline (as far as I well can) the mentioning of Elaborate Chymical Experiments, for fear of frighting you by their tediousness and difficulty; but yet in confirmation of what I have been newly telling you about the possibility of Varying the Colours of Liquors, better than the Water-drinkers are wont to do, I shall add, that Helmont used to make a preparation of Steel, which a very Ingenious Chymist, his Sons Friend, whom you know, sometimes employes for a succedaneum to the Spaw-waters, by Diluting this Essentia Martis Liquida (as he calls it) with a due proportion of Water. Now that for which I mention to you this preparation, (which as he communicated to me, I know he will not refuse to Pyrophilus) is this, that though the Liquor (as I can shew you when you please) be almost of the Colour of a German (not an Oriental) Amethyst, and consequently remote enough from Green, yet a very few drops being let fall into a Large proportion of good Rhenish, or (in want of that) White Wine (which yet do’s not quite so well) immediately turn’d the Liquor into a lovely Green, as I have not without delight shown several curious Persons. By which Phænomenon you may learn, among other things, how requisite it is in Experiments about the changes of Colours heedfully to mind the Circumstances of them; for Water will not, as I have purposely try’d, concurr to the production of any such Green, nor did it give that Colour to moderate Spirit of Wine, wherein I purposely dissolv’d it, and Wine it self is a Liquor that few would suspect of being able to work suddenly any such change in a Metalline preparation of this Nature; and to satisfie my self that this new Colour proceeds rather from the peculiar Texture of the Wine, than from any greater Acidity, that Rhenish or White-wine (for that may not absurdly be suspected) has in comparison of Water; I purposely sharpen’d the Solution of this Essence in fair Water, with a good quantity of Spirit of Salt, notwithstanding which, the mixture acquir’d no Greenness. And to vary the Experiment a little, I try’d, that if into a Glass of Rhenish Wine made Green by this Essence, I dropp’d an Alcalizate Solution, or Urinous Spirit, the Wine would presently grow Turbid, and of an odd Dirty Colour; But if instead of dissolving the Essence in Wine, I dissolv’d it in fair Water sharpen’d perhaps with a little Spirit of Salt, then either the Urinous Spirit of Sal Armoniack, or the solution of the fix’d Salt of Pot-ashes would immediately turn it of a Yellowish Colour, the fix’d or Urinous Salt Precipitating the Vitriolate substance contain’d in the Essence. But here I must not forget to take notice of a circumstance that deserves to be compar’d with some part of the foregoing Experiment, for whereas our Essence imparts a Greenness to Wine, but not to Water, the Industrious Olaus Wormius23 in his late Musæum tells us of a rare kind of Turn-Sole which he calls Bezetta Rubra given him by an Apothecary that knew not how it was made, whose lovely Redness would be easily communicated to Water, if it were immers’d in it; but scarce to Wine, and not at all to Spirit of Wine, in which last circumstance it agrees with what I lately told you of our Essence, notwithstanding their disagreement in other particulars.