Alchemy 


   Alchemy, ancient art practiced especially in the Middle Ages,
   devoted chiefly to discovering a substance that would transmute
   the more common metals into gold or silver and to finding a
   means of indefinitely prolonging human life. Although its purposes
   and techniques were dubious and often illusory, alchemy was in
   many ways the predecessor of modern science, especially the
   science of chemistry.

   The birthplace of alchemy was ancient Egypt, where, in
   Alexandria, it began to flourish in the Hellenistic period;
   simultaneously, a school of alchemy was developing in China. The
   writings of some of the early Greek philosophers might be
   considered to contain the first chemical theories; and the theory
   advanced in the 5th century BC by Empedocles-that all things
   are composed of air, earth, fire, and water-was influential in
   alchemy. The Roman emperor Caligula is said to have instituted
   experiments for producing gold from orpiment, a sulfide of arsenic,
   and the emperor Diocletian is said to have ordered all Egyptian
   works concerning the chemistry of gold and silver to be burned in
   order to stop such experiments. Zosimus the Theban (about
   AD250-300) discovered that sulfuric acid is a solvent of metals,
   and he liberated oxygen from the red oxide of mercury.

   The fundamental concept of alchemy stemmed from the
   Aristotelian doctrine that all things tend to reach perfection.
   Because other metals were thought to be less "perfect" than
   gold, it was reasonable to assume that nature formed gold out of
   other metals deep within the earth and that with sufficient skill
   and diligence an artisan could duplicate this process in the
   workshop. Efforts toward this goal were empirical and practical at
   first, but by the 4th century AD, astrology, magic, and ritual had
   begun to gain prominence.

   A school of pharmacy flourished in Arabia during the caliphates of
   the Abbasids from 750 to 1258. The earliest known work of this
   school is the Summa Perfectionis (Summit of Perfection),
   attributed to the Arabian scientist and philosopher Geber; the
   work is consequently the oldest book on chemistry proper in the
   world and is a collection of all that was then known and believed.
   The Arabian alchemists worked with gold and mercury, arsenic
   and sulfur, and salts and acids, and they became familiar with a
   wide range of what are now called chemical reagents. They
   believed that metals are compound bodies, made up of mercury
   and sulfur in different proportions. Their scientific creed was the
   potentiality of transmutation, and their methods were mostly
   blind gropings; yet, in this way, they found many new substances
   and invented many useful processes.

   From the Arabs, alchemy generally found its way through Spain
   into Europe. The earliest authentic works extant on European
   alchemy are those of the English monk Roger Bacon and the
   German philosopher Albertus Magnus; both believed in the
   possibility of transmuting inferior metals into gold. This idea
   excited the imagination, and later the avarice, of many persons
   during the Middle Ages. They believed gold to be the perfect
   metal and that baser metals were more imperfect than gold.
   Thus, they sought to fabricate or discover a substance, the
   so-called philosopher's stone, so much more perfect than gold
   that it could be used to bring the baser metals up to the
   perfection of gold.

   Roger Bacon believed that gold dissolved in aqua regia was the
   elixir of life. Albertus Magnus had a great mastery of the practical
   chemistry of his time. The Italian Scholastic philosopher St.
   Thomas Aquinas, the Catalan churchman Raymond Lully, and the
   Benedictine monk Basil Valentine (flourished 15th century) also
   did much to further the progress of chemistry, although along
   alchemical lines, in discovering the uses of antimony, the
   manufacture of amalgams, and the isolation of spirits of wine, or
   ethyl alcohol.

   Important compilations of recipes and techniques in this period
   include The Pirotechnia (1540; trans. 1943), by the Italian
   metallurgist Vannoccio Biringuccio; Concerning Metals (1556;
   trans. 1912), by the German mineralogist Georgius Agricola; and
   Alchemia (1597), by Andreas Libavius, a German naturalist and
   chemist.

   Most famous of all was the 16th-century Swiss alchemist
   Philippus Paracelsus. Paracelsus held that the elements of
   compound bodies were salt, sulfur, and mercury, representing,
   respectively, earth, air, and water; fire he regarded as
   imponderable, or nonmaterial. He believed, however, in the
   existence of one undiscovered element common to all, of which
   the four elements of the ancients were merely derivative forms.
   This prime element of creation Paracelsus termed alkahest, and
   he maintained that if it were found, it would prove to be the
   philosopher's stone, the universal medicine, and the irresistible
   solvent.

   After Paracelsus, the alchemists of Europe became divided into
   two groups. One group was composed of those who earnestly
   devoted themselves to the scientific discovery of new
   compounds and reactions; these scientists were the legitimate
   ancestors of modern chemistry as ushered in by the work of the
   French chemist Antoine Lavoisier. The other group took up the 
   visionary, metaphysical side of the older alchemy and developed 
   it into a practice based on imposture, necromancy, and fraud, 
   from which the prevailing notion of alchemy is derived.

  "Alchemy," Microsoft® Encarta® Online Encyclopedia 2000
   http://encarta.msn.com © 1997-2000 Microsoft Corporation. All rights
   reserved.

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