The following are the passages I found in the old guy’s stack of papers
Take your retort which should be well sealed and put therein that which you wish to distill downward, such as the wood of juniper or cypress or guaiac wood. You will be able to extract oil from every wood that is gummy and dry in this way by making the fire from above as you see. Put the retort in a cauldron or a pot which has an opening at the bottom so that the neck of the retort can pass through and join with the receptacle below
With this method you will be able to extract oil from juniper wood and cypress wood and from lignum vitae, that is guaiac wood, to bathe the gummas of syphilis. You will also be able to make all kinds of oil that you want. This distillation is very effective.
THE JESUATTI BOOK OF REMEDIES 1562
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First you make a pot of copper in 3 pieces well soldered and joined together and well fastened and well welded with very good tin inside and out if that can be done. This pot is in the form that you see with a tube well fastened together and soldered inside and out so that no gases can escape. Then make a coil or twist of copper or of lead, but it is better of copper, soldered with silver in the way that you see so its mouth receives that of the cap. It should be well fastened with cloth and strong plaster that does not fear heat or water and so it cannot ever leak air because all the good gas may be lost. Be advised that above that place you should make drops of cold water fall.
THE JESUATTI BOOK OF REMEDIES 1562
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Distillation vessels must be made of venys [Venetian] glasse bycause they shoulde the better withstande the hete of the fyre.
Hieronymus Brunschwyck 1505
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The purification of liquid matter from its turbulent faeces, and conservation of it from putrefaction. For we see a thing distilled (by what kind soever of distillation) to be rendered more pure, and to be better preserved from putrefaction. Hence why distillation by filter is called distillation in the first place.
The Summa Perfectionis by pseudo-Geber (late 13th century Spain)
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Take the shavings of Guaiacum, fill a large retort with them three quarters full, place it in a Reverberatory Furnace, and joyn to it a great capacious receiver. Begin the distillation with a fire of the first degree.
Nicolas Lemery 1698
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What may be even more significant were the very large amounts of whisky the alchemist found it necessary to employ in his search for the philosophers’ stone, and the occasional puncheon of wine for making the quintessence.
E. J. Holmyard (1957), writing about John Damien 1505