Juniper Water compound.
Take Juniper berries well bruised 12 ounces; Seeds of Anise, Caraway, Coriander, each one ounce; Brandy 6 quarts; Water (boil'd half away) 2 quarts; decrepitated Salt 4 ounces. Distil in an Alembic according to art.
If instead of Brandy you employ a foul Spirit, such as the common Distillers use, its filthy Phlegm would give your Water a nasty Smell and Taste.
I add Water, both to take down the heat of the Spirit, and also to keep the Ingredients from burning: And I may put in as much as I will, for the Spirit will come over the Helm first; and afterwards when it runneth too small, I may cease the Operation, and leave the rest behind in the Vesica. My design in boiling it is, to drive off those crude Particles. that are apt to make it mothery or musty.
That Distill'd Water is not the same with Spring Water, appears from this Experiment (as I read in Tachenius Hip.106.) If you drop a solution of Saccharum Saturni, made in common Water, or of Silver, made in Aqua fortis, into spring Water, 'twill turn it milky white, which 'twill not do, if dropped into the same Water distilled: And therefore B. Porta (in magn. nat.l.5.C.5.p.254.) for the preparing of the Philosophical Tree, appointeth the Water to be two or three times distill'd, that it may remain diaphanous. And so he thinks its plainly prov'd, that Spring Water contains an occult Alkali, which distilling utterly divests it of.
It provokes Urine, expels Wind, warms and corroborates the Stomach and Bowels, and is good in the Colic and Spleen.
Thomas Fuller
Pharmacopeia Extemporanea 1710