Now
I am come to the arts, and I shall begin from Distillation, an
invention of later times, a wonderful thing, to be praised beyond the
power of man, not that which the vulgar and unskillful man may use. For
they do but corrupt and destroy what is good. But that which is done by
skillful artists. This admirable art, teaches how to make spirits...
- Glambattista della (John Baptist) Porta, Natural Magick (1588), 233.