It is dedicated to making a prodigious substance, the quintessence, from a mysterious material called argento vivo, which happens to be wine.
Ortholan is the first author to relate alcohol and quintessence, half a century before Jean de Roquetaillade.
Its theme revolves around the primordial heat, praised by Hermes as a universal substrate that gives dynamism to the whole cosmos.
This second part was published in the alchemical compilation In hoc volumine de alchemia continentur hæc (1541).
A 1560 edition appeared under the name Compendium alchimiae and was attributed to Johannes de Garlandia (philologist).