The stuff and matter convenient, which nature giveth to be turned into blood, is bread and wine.
All kind of nourishing victuals is understood to be comprehended in these two, and from hence in the Gothish tongue is called companage.

To find out this meat and drink, to prepare and boil it, the hands are put to work, the feet do walk and bear up the whole bulk of the corporal mass; the eyes guide and conduct all; the appetite in the orifice of the stomach, by means of (a) little sourish black humour, called melancholy, which is transmitted thereto from the milt, giveth warning to shut in the food.

The tongue doth make the first essay, and tastes it; the teeth do chew it, and the stomach doth receive, digest, and chylify it.

The mesaraic veins suck out of it what is good and fit, leaving behind the excrements, which are, through special conduits for that purpose, voided by an expulsive faculty.
Thereafter it is carried to the liver, where it being changed again, it by the virtue of that new transmutation becomes blood.

What joy, conjecture you, will then be found amongst those officers when they see this rivulet of gold, which is their sole restorative?
No greater is the joy of alchemists, when after long travail, toil, and expense they see in their furnaces the transmutation.