The Viper is one of the Reptiles, but whether Animal or Insect, I dispute not.

 

Chapter VI.

Of Vipers.

The viper is one of the reptiles, but whether animal or insect, I dispute not. The creature is well known, and has a skin scaly, and withal so very compact that it permits little or no perspiration of spirits, which is the reason why it is able to live several months without any other nourishment than that of air. 

As to the story of Pliny about their generation, that the male puts his head into the mouth of the female, which she bites off, that the young vipers pierce the womb and sides of their dame, and by that means revenge the death of their sire, of their particular hatred of the ash-tree, that they will rather run into the fire than come near it, and the like, I reject them as fabulous.

Authors are of different opinions about the manner of emitting their poison, some asserting it proceeds from the yellow juice which often appears upon the surface of the wound, and others from the rage of the animal (see this affair satisfactorily cleared up in the late elegant edition of Dr. Mead's Essay on Poisons). But my design being only to give such antidotes and medicines as are produced from them by chemical preparation, I omit all disputes as foreign to my purpose.

The Distillation of Vipers.

Take what number of vipers you please. Open and cleanse them from all worms and excrements, and the females of their eggs; take out their hearts and livers, and when they are dry, cut the bodies into small pieces, and fill therewith a coated retort three quarters full. Place it in a reverberatory fit for the retort; lute to it a receiver, which must be capacious. Cover the furnace with its dome, and give a gentle fire for two hours, in which time the greatest part of the phlegm will come off, then increase the fire to the second degree for two hours more, which will raise the spirit and volatile salt; increase it still to the third, which will fill the recipient with clouds. Keep up this degree till the clouds lessen in the receiver; continue the increase of the fire still to the fourth degree, and keep it there till all be come over, and the receiver grows cool. Then, cease the fire, and you will find the phlegm, spirit, salt and oil, which must be rectified as follows.

(Sixteen ounces of vipers yielded one ounce and six drams of volatile salt, two ounces and three drams of black oil, three ounces of spirit, and the same quantity of phlegm; there remained in the bottom of the distilling vessel five ounces and two drams of a black matter. See Lemery's Chemistry.)

Some take only the bodies, pulling off the skin and cutting off the heads and tails, which they put away; also, they put away their heart and liver. But all these yield as much salt proportionable to their weight as the bodies do. You may as well perform this operation in a good sand-furnace and uncoated retort, as you can in a reverberatory.

Rectification of the Salt of Vipers.

Put all that you find in the receiver into a long-bodied, uncut cucurbit. If more salt adheres to the receiver than the liquid which distilled from the vipers will dissolve, put in a little water and rinse all the salt out into the body. Place the cucurbit in balneo, or a gentle heat of sand or ashes; lute on the head with a bladder daubed with stiff starch and dipped in the white of an egg. You may also lute on a small receiver to the beak of the alembic, and the salt will sublime into the head or upper part of the body, distinct from the phlegm and grosser part of the oil, which must be kept in a clean phial, carefully and exactly stopped for use.

To this salt many virtues are attributed, as that it gives relief even in those diseases which are most refractory and difficult to cure, as apoplexies, lethargies, convulsions, palsies, and all other diseases believed to have their source in the brain; likewise, in distempers of the heart, pleurisies, swoonings, etc. It dissipates all inward imposthumes, and dislodges secret and unknown pains which have their origin in the spirits; it helps digestion, and purifies the whole mass of blood, resolves and prevents coagulations in all parts of the body. It is an excellent remedy against all intermitting fevers, particularly quartans; it works powerfully in the distempers of the matrix, and is an enemy to all the vices of the skin, even to the leprosy itself.

But above all, it is a most certain specific against the bitings of all venomous creatures. It is also a great antidote against the plague, and all contagious and epidemical diseases as the measles, small pox, &c.

Its dose is from ten grains to two scruples in any proper vehicle. 

This excellent salt is also another ingrediant in the anti-rheumatic tincture.

If you desire the salt more nicely separated from all the oily particles which it carried with it in the first rectification, mix three parts of clean and very dry chalk in fine powder with one part of the rectified salt of vipers. Put it into a matrass or uncut cucurbit with its head and receiver well-luted, and with a gentle fire sublime the salt, and it will leave all the oily particles absorbed in the chalk. 

A Sulphuric Water of Vipers.

Take what number of live vipers you please. Put them into a strong earthen body; tie a hair-cloth over its mouth (such as coarse hairsieves are made of), fit and fasten a head well to it, then place it in balneo, which gradually make to boil. This will elevate the water, which you will see drop into the receiver; when the drops cease to fall, let it cool and take out the water.

Its operation is diaphoretic, and it is successfully exhibited in many cases, where the salt is proper. Its dose is from twenty to seventy or eighty drops in any proper vehicle. 

The hair-cloth is fastened to keep the vipers from jumping into the head, when they begin to be heated, by which means they may possibly break the head and get out, whose biting then would be extremely pernicious by reason of their irritation by the heat of the fire.

The Essence of Vipers.

Take of dried vipers what number you please. Cut them into small pieces, and put them into a cucurbit; place it conveniently, and pour into it (by a little at a time) so much spirit of nitre as will dissolve them (commonly twelve ounces of spirit of nitre will dissolve four ounces of vipers). When all the spirit is put upon them, let them stand five or six hours, and there will arise a black scum upon the surface of the dissolution, which must be taken off with a glass spoon or, in defect of that, a clean tobacco pipe. You will likewise find white feces in the bottom, which must also be separated from the clear dissolution; pour the clear liquor into a retort, and by an ounce or two at a time put to it three times its weight of tartarized spirit of wine, shaking them often about as you mix them. Place the retort in a heat of ashes, and with a gentle fire distill off the spirit of wine, which will be an excellent dulcified spirit of nitre. To the black matter remaining in the bottom of the retort, put the same quantity of new spirit of wine tartarized, and distill it off as you did the other; put on again the same quantity as before, and distill in the same manner, and repeat this so often with new spirit of wine till it has neither any nitrous smell nor acid taste. Keep that which remains in the retort to unite with the volatile salt and rectified oil of vipers, as in the following processes.

When you put the spirit of nitre to the vipers, place the vessel where the fumes may ascend without offending you; also, be careful not to put above one ounce of the spirit of wine to the solution, lest the ebullition should be so strong as to make the matter fly out of the vessel with violence.

(If you put the solution by little and little to eight times the quantity of spirit, you will avoid the danger here hinted at, and at the same time finish this process at one single distillation.)

The Rectification of the Oil of Vipers.

Put the oil and phlegm from which the salt of vipers was sublimed into a cucurbit capable of holding two gallons. Pour to them one gallon of clean water; set the cucurbit in a sand-furnace. Fit to it a head and reciever; give it a gradual fire till the matter within the body bubbles. Continue the fire so, till holding a spoon under the beak of the head you perceive very little or no oil to swim upon the water, which drops into the spoon, then let all cool, and you will have water with the aethereal oil of vipers in the receiver.

One gallon of water will be sufficient to rectify four ounces of the black oil with, and generally by that time you have distilled two quarts of water, you will have all the aethereal oil come over. 

The Compound Tincture of Vipers.

Take one pound of flowers of sulphur, four ounces of crude antimony, Grind them to a fine powder; put it into an earthen dish and saturate it with four ounces of oil of sulphur per camoanum (or with oil of vitriol). Put the matter into a retort, and pour gradually one pound of sweet spirit of nitre upon it; place the retort in a sand-furnace and draw off the spirit. Into one pound of this spirit put two ounces of dried vipers (cut into small pieces); let them digest forty-eight hours in a matrass. When cool, strain the liquor through a hair-cloth; return the menstruum into a matrass, adding cochineal, saffron and Virginia snake-root, of each two drams. Let them digest forty-eight hours, and then decant the clear tincture. 

It is an excellent diaphoretic. In the year 1665, I have known it often given with success in the plague, as well as in malignant fevers. The dose is from five to fifty drops. 

The Union of the Volatile Salt, Aethereal Oil and the most subtile parts of the Viper into an Essence.

Put to four ounces of the dissolved body of the vipers left in the retort one ounce of tinctura regalis (before mentioned in the chapter on antimony) by a dram at a time. Then to two ounces of the salt and half an ounce of the aethereal oil, put one pound of the same tinctura regalis; put them into a matrass, whicj make a circulatory, and let them stand ten days in the sun (or an equivalent heat), shaking them every day. When you see the tincture has imbibed all the salt and oil, take it out, and put it to the dissolution of the vipers aforesaid; and when by a strong agitation you have loosened the dissolution from the retort, put it all into a matrass, and let it circulate in a very gentle heat ten days, shaking it every day. In this time, all the several substances will be united into an essence, which pour off from the feces intoa clean phial, and keep carefully stopped for use.

This essence is endued with all the virtues of the salt of vipers, and if any animal medicine exceeds the salt, it is this. Its dose is from twenty to one hundred drops in any appropriated liquor.

The ounce of tinctura regalis is put to the dissolved vipers to satiate (in part) the acidity still remaining in them, which otherwise might too much fix the salt of vipers, and reduce it to the nature of common saly armoniac (the salt which results from a solution of vipers in spirit of nitre, more perfectly resembles nitre than sal armoniac). 

You may likewise dulcify the dissolution by ptting to it (by little at a time) as much pure fixed nitre as will satiate its acidity; then, let it stand in a cold place, and it will shoot into a combustible saltpetre again, and the dissolution will be thereby frred from the corrosive spirit of nitre, which would have changed the volatile salt into that which some call the secret sal armoniac.

Whatever animal, vegetable or mineral is dissolved in the spirit of nitre, it will be made to precipitate with the fixed salt, and on the contrary, whatever is dissolved in the oil of nitre per deliquium or by its fixed salt will be separated by the spirit, and this (if carefully elaborated) may be done without prejudice to the matters dissolved, and to the augmentation of their virtues by digesting and ripening their undigested crudities.