pdf - Roger Gaskell Rare Books

Persian from a woodcut. Full page engraved portrait of the author on
2✠1v signed ‘I. Laurus f.’.
210 x 150mm. Title soiled and a little frayed in the margins; last leaf
with several round wormholes aVecting a few letters; some light stains.
Binding: Re­sewn and rebound in recent marbled boards.
Provenance: Initials ‘B.F.’ in an early hand on title.
First edition. Reprinted at Strasbourg in 1609; an English translation was
published in 1658. Norman 1725; Duveen p. 481.
Porta’s major work on distillation is his third and last treatment of the subject.
The Wrst two were sections of his great Magia naturalis, Wrst published in 1561
(in 4 books) and in extended form in 1589 (in 20 books). The section on
distillation is further expanded for the present work (Partington p. 24). De
distillatione lib. X ‘is of interest as giving a more comprehensive view of the
applications of distillation in the sixteenth century than is found in any other
work of the period’ (Stillman).
The Wrst and longest, and the most fully illustrated, of the nine books
deals with diVerent forms of stills. Porta describes various forms of distilling
apparatus for various uses including the preparation of essential oils, on which
Forbes says he is a very good authority having had occasion to observe the
industry in Naples. Porta was the Wrst to give yields from diVerent materials.
He also deals with various stills designed to produce diVerent strengths of
alcohol, all with air cooled condensers; one still is heated by the sun. In the
same spirit as his Physiognomonia and Phytognomonica, in one section he
compares the stills and their functions with animals. Hot things require a still
with a short thick neck, just as nature has given ‘angry and furious creatures’
like the bear and the lion short strong necks. After this preliminary treatise on
stills, the other 8 books give more speciWc details of the preparation of perfumes
and the distillation of essential oils; resins; and woods; and the extraction of
virtues of substances, such as aqua vita essentia, that is alcohol.
The Wne author portrait by Giacomo Lauro or Iacobus Laurus (active
c.1583–c.1645) shows Porta aged 64 surrounded by motifs referring to his
his various studies: physiognomy, astrology, geometry, optics, fortiWcation,
cryptography and distilling.
Partington ii, pp. 15–25; R. J. Forbes, A short history of the art of distillation (1970)
pp. 117–121 (noting this work but in fact describing the distillation section of
Magia naturalis (1689); John Masxon Stillman, The Story of Early Chemistry
(1924), pp. 350–51.
155
POWER, Henry (1623–1668)
Experimental philosophy, in three books: containing new
experiments [brace] microscopical, mercurial, magnetical. With
some deductions, and probable hypotheses, raised from them, in
avouchment and illustration of the now famous atomical hypothesis.
London: printed by T. Roycroft, for John Martin, and James Allestry, at
the Bell in S. Pauls Church-yard, 1664.