Taking a Look Inside

Although this seems to not be a typical book concerning the topic of the human physic, the author tries to clarify that this is touching upon the curing of external and internal diseases.  The caveat is that these cures all come through the many products of distillations.  Thus, this is more of Introduction to Distillations.

The work is made up of four books, or sections.  The first claims to consider the most secretive remedies to all diseases, but it also refers to vessels and furnaces serving to distillation.

Here is one of the many figures detailing the specs of such furnaces and vessels.  We must assume that the text is extremely detailed because there is no way these illustrations could serve as exact instructions.

Here are more illustration that give a little better representation of what the text would be detailing.  In the left, we see outdoor distillation, taking into account natural factors like sunlight and air.  On the right is a more technical setup, with a structure involving multiple flasks and probably a decent amount of construction.

Again, we get a little more detail about these various processes.  On the left, it is clear that heat plays a part in this distillation, implying that evaporation of the solution is a step of the process.  The image on the right falls under the chapter heading “The ingenious manner of distilling by Sand,” but it is unclear if this is what is being portrayed.  Many of these prints are actually repeated throughout the book, making it more difficult to determine exactly what they are portraying.

To prove my last point, on the left page is the same image from earlier in the book.  The second book starts here, now more specifically looking at secret remedies of distilled waters

Two images, the bottom being more interesting.  Only because sections of this (it can only be assumed) mechanism for distillation are labeled but these lettered parts do not appear to be referred to in any adjacent text.  Of course, this exact image is probably used multiple times throughout the work.

This section begins with quite the mysterious title: Containing Very Strange Secrets.  The illustration itself in interesting, portraying a modern scientist busily working away, surrounded by the his tools of distillation.

Another book, another mysterious title.  This section claims to be concerned with many singular secret remedies.  The image is that of some fantastical tree, or perhaps a structure for distillation, with birds coming out the vessel-like branches.  And just below this tree is a dragon-like creature lapping from a solution, maybe even a product of the processes laid out in this fourth book.