Put what quantity of Millepedes you please into a Long-Bodied Retort, so that it be not above half full.

 

Chapter II.

Of Sow's or Hog-Lice.

They breed in cellars and moist places, under stones, old casks and logs of wood; being touched, they gather themselves up like round beads. They are said to digest, extenuate, open and cleanse, and resolve tartarous mucilage; they are good in the jaundice, colic, stone and difficulty of urine. 

The Spirit, Volatile Salt and Oil of Hog-Lice.

Put what quantity of millepedes you please into a long-bodied retort, so that it be not above half full. Place it in a sand-furnace; lute on its receiver, and give it the first degree of fire till the retort is thoroughly hot. Then, increase the fire to the second, in which keep it two or three hours (according to the quantity of lice), and some liquor will drop into the receiver, and the volatile salt will begin to rise. Increase it to the third and fourth degree, then cease and take off the receiver when it is cool, where you will have spirit, oil and salt, which you may separate and rectify apart, or put all together into a long-necked matrass, luting on its head and receiver, and separate the salt by sublimation, as you do that of vipers. 

Its operation is diaphoretic and diuretic. Its dose from ten to fifty or sixty drops. 

You may make the tincture and essence of them in the same manner as you are directed in the following chapter of ants. 

Chapter III.

Of Ants.

These are wife and industrious insects, making provision in the summer, for their support in winter, observing a regular discipline in their labour, regimenting their numbers and as it were constituting officers over those that are appointed to work, to see its performance. I have with delight and wonder observed them to issue out of their hives in order and, when loaded with provision, returning in a continual line without being jostled by those which have disburdened themselves, and are marching out for more stores. This labour they perform in the full of the Moon, and rest in the new.

They are black or reddish. In the winter they breed eggs and worms, which in the summer become ants; those which breed under trees and smell sour are accounted best. They are said to provoke venery and create courage. Some authors use their eggs to restore hearing/

The Spirit, Oil and Volatile Salt of Ants.

Take what quantity of ants you please. Put them into a long-bodied retort or an uncut cucurbit; let not the vessel be above half-filled with the insects. Fit a recipient and lute the joint well.

Give gradual fire as you did the millepedes, and in all things proceed as in the distillation and rectification of them. After you have separated the salt by sublimation, put the oil and phlegm remaining in the matrass into a retort with a long body; rinse out as much as you can of the oil which adheres to it, till it is above half filled with water. Place it in a sand-furnace, and give it a gradual fire till the water and oil bubble a little; but take care it boil not over, for then your labour will be lost. If you put a quarter part of spiritus nitri dulcis to the oil in its rectification, it will render the oil more pleasant, and no way hurt its virtue.

The Tincture of Ants.

Take what quantity of ants you please. Put them into an uncut body, and put upon them as much oil of nitre per deliquium, as will cover them. Let them stand in a gentle heat of digestion five or six days, in which time they will be dissolved, towards the end of which you may increase the fire three or four hours to make them boil; then, let them cool, and pour upon them three times their weight of spirit of wine. Stop the body with a small matrass, and lute the joint well.

Let it stand in a good digesting heat till the spirit is well tinged; let that cool, and pour it off, and put on more tartarized spirit of wine, and set it again in digestion till it has also acquired a tincture, which will be in two or three days' time. Decant that tincture to the first, and put both into a cucurbit; lute on its head and reciever and, in balneo mariae, draw off two-thirds of the spirit of wine. That which remains in the cucurbit let cool and settle and, by gentle inclination, pour the tincture into a clean dry phial for use. 

If the oil of nitre be very strong, the spirit of wine will not mix with it, but will swim upon it as oil doth upon water, and will only prey upon the animal sulphur opened by the oil. Remember to shake them often while they stand in digestion.

In virtue, it exceeds that which is attributed to the creature in every respect. Its dose is from ten to sixty or seventy drops in a glass of canary, or wine and water. 

The Essence of Ants.

Dissolve ants in spirit of nitre, in the same manner as is directed in making the essence of the vipers. Skim off the froth, and decant it from the feces.

To clear dissolution of four ounces of ants, put of their rectified oil four drams, which drop in by half a dram at a time; then, put also, by little at a time, two ounces of their salt. When all is mixed and the ebullition ceased, shake them well and set them in a very gentle heat of digestion forty-eight hours in a circulatory vessel; then, by gentle inclination, pour off the dissolution from the feces into a clean cucurbit, to which also out a much fixed nitre in powder, by a little at a time till no effervescence appears. Let them stand cool and quiet, and in a few hours they will shoot into a renovated saltpetre. If any liquor remains with the crystals, pour it off into a clean cucurbit with its head and receiver and, in a very gentle warmth dry it. Likewise dry gently that precipitate which the spirit of nitre let fall when it embraced its own first salt. 

Then, put the renovated nitre, precipitate and the residence of the liquor, which was evaporated, all together. Grind them in a glass or marble mortar; put them into a matrass. Pour upon them one pound of tartarized spirit of wine; invert a small matrass and lute the joint well, and let it stand in digestion three or four days, shaking it every day once or twice. Then, let it cool and settle, and decant off the tinged spirit, and to the matter remaining put another pound of tartarized spirit of wine. Let it stand as before, to extract more tincture, and so proceed till it gives no color to the spirit of wine. 

Then, put all the tinged spirits into a cucurbit, lute on well its head and receiver and, in a gentle heat of balneum, draw off three-fourths of the spirit, which keep well-stopped for any such like operation hereafter. That which remains in the cucurbit let cool, and pour it into a clean bottle, which keep well-stopped for use. 

This is the most excellent medicine which is prepared of this industrious insect. Its dose is from ten to seventy or eighty drops. 

Place the vessel in which you make the dissolution in such a place where the noxious fumes may evaporate without offence, and continue it there after you have decanted the liquor from its feces till you have charged it with the volatile salt and oil of the insects, and also with its own fixed salt. Then, set it in digestion, as the process directs.