"For the imperfect body is converted into the first matter, and those waters being conjoined with our water do make one pure and clear water, purifying all things and yet containing in itself all necessary things. And this water of which and with which our magistery is effected, is both dear and cheap, for it dissolveth bodies not with common solution as the ignorant report, which converts the body into cloud water, but by the true philosophical solution, in which the body is changed into its first water of which it hath been from the beginning this self same body."
— Rosarium Philosophorum, c. 1550