Solution (Dissolution)
Zodiacal correspondence (Pernety, 1758): Cancer ♋
Solution, or dissolution, is the reduction of a solid into a liquid, whether by water, acid, or a 'philosophical' solvent. It is the complement of congelation in the solve et coagula cycle and was thought to return a body toward its first matter. Pernety assigns it to Cancer, a watery sign, and Ripley made 'secret dissolution' his second gate. The operation embraced everything from dissolving salts and metals in the strong mineral acids to the slow liquefaction of substances in gentle heat or corrosive waters.
See also the concept page: Dissolution
Historical Development
Solution names the breaking-down of a solid body into a liquid state, conceptually returning matter toward an undifferentiated first matter from which it could be reformed. With congelation it expresses the foundational alternation of dissolving and fixing that organizes much alchemical theory and practice.
The medieval Latin discovery and refinement of the strong mineral acids (nitric, hydrochloric, sulphuric, and the gold-dissolving aqua regia) gave dissolution dramatic new power. Pernety keys the operation to Cancer; Ripley had already made it his second gate, 'secret dissolution.' Here the two schemes coincide, both treating dissolution as an early and essential step.
Textual Tradition
Dissolution is ubiquitous across the corpus, from the Arabic tradition through Pseudo-Geber and the vernacular treatises. The discovery of the mineral acids is documented in the works analyzed by Robert Multhauf and is central to the practical chymistry that William Newman and Lawrence Principe have reconstructed.
Modern Scholarship
Historians of chemistry highlight the medieval mineral acids as a turning point that made dissolution a precise and powerful analytical tool, central to assaying and to the eventual emergence of analytical chemistry. The capacity to dissolve and then recover metals quantitatively underwrote both alchemical ambition and sober metallurgical testing.