Hieronymous Brunschwig (c. 1453 – c. 1513) was a surgeon in the Imperial Free City of Strasbourg who published on subjects including medicine, the plague, and surgery, though his most important works were those concerned with distillation. This volume, Liber de arte distillandi de compositis or Großes Destillierbuch, is Brunschwig's second work on distillation. His first, Liber de arte distillandi de simplicibus or Kleines Destillierbuch (1510), was the first-ever work on distillation to be written fully in German, despite its Latin title.

Despite being Brunchwig's second work, Distillandi de Copositis remains one of the earliest known printed books on chemistry and chemical technology published in the Western world. This extensive volume describes and illustrates the necessary apparatus and techniques of distillation. The work neatly summarizes the extent of chemical and pharmacological knowledge at the beginning of the sixteenth century.

Digitization includes this work's numerous, hand-colored woodcut prints.