The Art of Distillation

Description

The Art of Distillation is a book by seventeenth-century English physician, John French, first published in 1651. The full title of the work is 'The Art of Distillation, Or, A Treatise of the Choicest Spagyrical Preparations Performed by Way of Distillation, Being Partly Taken Out of the Most Select Chemical Authors of the Diverse Languages and Partly Out of the Author's Manual Experience together with, The Description of the Chiefest Furnaces and Vessels Used by Ancient and Modern Chemists, also A Discourse on Diverse Spagyrical Experiments and Curiosities, and of the Anatomy of Gold and Silver, with The Chiefest Preparations and Curiosities Thereof, and Virtues of Them All, All Which Are Contained In Six Books'. The book, which has 42 woodcut illustrations, is a detailed handbook of the knowledge and practice at the time, and is said to be possibly the earliest definitive book on distillation.

This book has 58,998 words, 111 pages in the PDF version, and was originally published in 1651.

Production notes: This ebook of The Art of Distillation was published by Global Grey in 2018, and updated on the 28th March 2023. The artwork used for the cover is 'An Alchemist in his Laboratory' by David Teniers the Younger.