The Art of Distillation

“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.