1781 – The Art of Distilling Everything: Bridegroom's Drops and a Chapter of Alchemy

$775.00

This is a manual for anyone in eighteenth-century Germany who owned a still and had ambitions for it. Gottfried Heinrich Burghart, professor at the royal gymnasium of Brieg in Silesia, laid out the whole art "for general use": the furnaces and retorts, the alembics and receivers, and then the recipes, which run from rosewater and coffee brandy to extracts of opium and tobacco, and on to the celebrated Bräutigams-Tropffen, the "bridegroom's drops," a cordial for wedding nights. The second volume, a book of additions keyed to the first, wanders further still, into extended sections on alchemy. The book brings domestic distilling and alchemical practice together. This set lacks the engraved plates referenced in its Register.

There is a small irony in the enlarger's name on the title page. Burghart died before this new edition, and it was augmented by Johann Christian Wiegleb, the apothecary of Langensalza who ranks among the fathers of scientific chemistry in Germany, and who only a few years earlier had published the age's most thorough demolition of alchemy's claims. Here he is all the same, seeing bridegroom's drops and alchemical additions through the press. The book closes with the author commending his readers to God's blessing and advantage, a rococo wreath, and a long register of the old chemical terms and signs.

The set is in its first dress and a pretty one: period full calf, the spines with five raised bands, richly gilt in compartments with floral tools, red morocco lettering-pieces and a second label reading II. THEIL, the sides in mottled calf, one board stained with unusual blues among the browns. The endpapers are marbled in the combed pattern, the edges stained red. Rubbed at the extremities as working books of the date are; the first volume's upper joint just starting; browning and foxing in places, an old ink stain to the gutter of a run of leaves in the first volume.

Provenance: None recorded.

Die zum allgemeinen Gebrauch wohleingerichtete Destillirkunst. Breslau, 1781. Two volumes in handsome period calf, the spines richly gilt. A Silesian professor's manual of the still, enlarged after his death by the chemist Johann Christian Wiegleb.

BURGHART, Gottfried Heinrich (1705–1771). Die zum allgemeinen Gebrauch wohleingerichtete Destillirkunst, worinnen sehr viele nützliche Zubereitungen beschrieben sind. New edition, enlarged with many additions by Johann Christian Wiegleb. Two volumes. Breslau: Wilhelm Gottlieb Korn, 1781.

Physical Description: 8vo, 2 volumes. Vol. I: [4] leaves, 328 pp. Vol. II: [1] leaf, 446 pp., [20] leaves of Register. Woodcut headpieces and tailpieces. Lacking the engraved plates referenced in the Register, as also noted in the auction record of this copy. Marbled endpapers, combed pattern; edges stained red.

Binding: Contemporary full calf, spines with five raised bands, richly gilt in compartments with floral tools, red morocco lettering-pieces and "II. Theil" label; sides mottled, one board stained in blues. Rubbed at extremities; upper joint of vol. I starting.

Condition: Browning and foxing in places; old ink stain to the gutter of pp. 225–243 in vol. I, occasionally touching text; small wormtrace to the foot of pp. 321–328; a few red smears to one endleaf of vol. II. The engraved plates are absent. Otherwise sound, attractive copies.

This is a manual for anyone in eighteenth-century Germany who owned a still and had ambitions for it. Gottfried Heinrich Burghart, professor at the royal gymnasium of Brieg in Silesia, laid out the whole art "for general use": the furnaces and retorts, the alembics and receivers, and then the recipes, which run from rosewater and coffee brandy to extracts of opium and tobacco, and on to the celebrated Bräutigams-Tropffen, the "bridegroom's drops," a cordial for wedding nights. The second volume, a book of additions keyed to the first, wanders further still, into extended sections on alchemy. The book brings domestic distilling and alchemical practice together. This set lacks the engraved plates referenced in its Register.

There is a small irony in the enlarger's name on the title page. Burghart died before this new edition, and it was augmented by Johann Christian Wiegleb, the apothecary of Langensalza who ranks among the fathers of scientific chemistry in Germany, and who only a few years earlier had published the age's most thorough demolition of alchemy's claims. Here he is all the same, seeing bridegroom's drops and alchemical additions through the press. The book closes with the author commending his readers to God's blessing and advantage, a rococo wreath, and a long register of the old chemical terms and signs.

The set is in its first dress and a pretty one: period full calf, the spines with five raised bands, richly gilt in compartments with floral tools, red morocco lettering-pieces and a second label reading II. THEIL, the sides in mottled calf, one board stained with unusual blues among the browns. The endpapers are marbled in the combed pattern, the edges stained red. Rubbed at the extremities as working books of the date are; the first volume's upper joint just starting; browning and foxing in places, an old ink stain to the gutter of a run of leaves in the first volume.