Alchemy

ALCHEMY. In the narrow sense of the word, alchemy is the pretended art of making gold and silver, or transmuting the base metals into the noble ones. The idea of such transmutation probably arose among the Alexandrian Greeks in the early cen turies of the Christian era; thence it passed to the Arabs, by whom it was transmitted to western Europe, and its realization was a leading aim of chemical workers down to the time of Para celsus and even later. Alchemy in its wider and truer significance stands for the chemistry of the middle ages. The idea of transmu tation, in the country of its origin, had a philosophical basis, and was linked up with the Greek theories of matter there current ; thus, by supplying a central philosophical principle, it to some extent unified and focused chemical effort, which pre viously, so far as it existed at all, had been expended on acquiring empirical acquaintance with a mass of disconnected technical processes. Alchemy in this sense is merely an early phase of the development of systematic chemistry; in Liebig's words, it was "never at any time anything different from chemistry." Regarding the derivation of the word, there are two main views which agree in holding that it has an Arabic descent, the prefix al being the Arabic article. But according to one, the second part of the word comes from the Greek xv,ufia, pouring, infusion, used in connection with the study of the juices of plants, and thence extended to chemical manipulations in general ; this der ivation accounts for the old-fashioned spellings "chymist" and "chymistry." The other view traces it to khern or khame, hiero glyph khmi, which denotes black earth as opposed to barren sand, and occurs in Plutarch as xv,ufia ; on this derivation alchemy is explained as meaning the "Egyptian art." The first occurrence of the word is said to be in a treatise of Julius Firmicus, an astrological writer of the 4th century, but the prefix al there must be the addition of a later copyist. In English, Piers Plowman (1362) contains the phrase "experimentis of alconomye," with variants "alkenemye" and "alknamye." The prefix al begins to be dropped about the middle of the i6th century.

Origins of Alchemy.

Numerouslegends cluster round the origin of alchemy. According to one story, it was founded by the Egyptian god Hermes (Thoth), the reputed inventor of the arts and sciences; after him later alchemists called their work the "hermetic art," and the seal of Hermes, which they placed upon their vessels, is the origin of the common phrase "hermetically sealed." Another legend asserts that the fallen angels taught the arts to the women they married, their instruction being recorded in a book called Chema. A similar story appears in the Book of Enoch, and Tertullian has much to say about the wicked angels who revealed to men the knowledge of gold and silver, of lustrous stones and of the power of herbs, and who introduced the arts of astrology and magic upon the earth. Another legend, to be found in Arabic sources, asserts that alchemy was revealed by God to Moses and Aaron. But there is some evidence that, in accordance with the strong and constant tradition among the alchemists, the idea of transmutation did originate in Egypt with the Greeks of Alexandria. In the Leyden museum there are a number of papyri which were found in a tomb at Thebes, written probably in the 3rd century A.D., though their matter is older. Some are in Greek and demotic, and one, of peculiar interest from the chemical point of view, gives a number of receipts, in Greek, which show a considerable knowledge in the manipulation of base metals to form alloys which simulate gold, and are intended to be used as a workshop manual in the manufacture of imitation jewellery. Possibly this is one of the books about gold and silver of which Diocletian decreed the destruction about A.D. 290. It has been suggested by M. P. E. Berthelot that the workers in these processes, which were a monopoly of the priestly caste and were kept strictly secret, though fully aware that their products were not truly gold, were in time led by their success in deceiving the public to deceive themselves also, and to come to believe that they actually had the power of making gold from substances which were not gold. Philosophical sanction and explanation of this belief was then found by bringing it into relation with the theory of the prima materia, which was identical in all bodies but received its actual f orm by the adjunction of qualities expressed by the Aristotelian elements--earth, air, fire and water. Some support for this view is gained from study of the alchemistical writings of the period. Thus, in the treatise known as Physica et Mystica and falsely ascribed to Democritus (such false attribu tions are a constant feature of the literature of alchemy), various receipts are given for colouring and gilding metals, but the concep tion of transmutation does not occur. This treatise was probably composed at a date not very different from that of the Leiden papyrus. Later, however, as in the Commentary on this work writ ten by Synesius to Dioscorus, priest of Serapis at Alexandria, which probably dates from the end of the 4th century, a changed attitude becomes apparent ; the more practical parts of the receipts are obscured or omitted, and the processes f or preparing alloys and colouring metals, described in the older treatise, are by a mystical interpretation represented as resulting in real transmutation.

But while there are thus some grounds for supposing that the idea of transmutation grew out of the practical receipts of Alexan drian Egypt, the alchemy which embraced it as a leading prin ciple was also much affected by Eastern influences such as magic and astrology. The earliest Greek alchemistical writings abound in references to Oriental authorities and traditions. Thus the pseudo-Democritus, who was the reputed author of the Physica et Mystica, which itself concludes each of its receipts with a magical formula, was believed to have travelled in Chaldaea, and to have had as his master Ostanes the Mede, a name mentioned several times in the Leyden papyrus, and often by early Christian writers such as Tertullian, St. Cyprian and St. Augustine. The practices of the Persian adepts also are appealed to in the writings of the *pseudo-Democritus, and of Zosimus and Synesius. The philos opher's egg, as a symbol of creation, is both Egyptian and Baby lonian. In the Greek alchemists it appears as the symbol at once of the art and of the universe, enclosing within itself the four elements. The conception of man, the microcosm, containing in himself all the parts of the universe or macrocosm, is also Baby lonian, as again probably is the famous identification of the metals with the planets. Even in the Leyden papyrus the astronomical symbols for the sun and moon are used to denote gold and silver, and in the Meteorologica of Olympiodorus lead is attributed to Saturn, iron to Mars, copper to Venus, tin to Hermes (Mercury) and electrum to Jupiter. Similar systems of symbols, but elabo rated to include compounds, appear in Greek mss. of the loth century, preserved in the library of St. Mark's at Venice. Subse quently electrum (an alloy of gold and silver) disappeared as a specific metal, and tin was ascribed to Jupiter instead, the sign of mercury becoming common to the metal and the planet.

Literature of Alchemy.

Aconsiderable body of Greek chemical writings is contained in mss. belonging to the various great libraries of Europe, the oldest being that at St. Mark's, just mentioned. The contents of these mss. are all of similar com position, and in Berthelot's opinion represent a collection of treatises made at Constantinople in the 8th or 9th century. The treatises are nearly all anterior to the 7th century, and most appear to belong to the 3rd and 4th centuries ; some are the work of authentic authors like Zosimus and Synesius, while others, such as profess to be written by Moses, Democritus, Ostanes, etc., are of clearly fictitious authorship. Some of the same names and the same works can be identified in the lists of the Kitab-al Fihrist (written by al-Nadim towards the end of the loth century). But the Arabs did not acquire their knowledge of this literature at first hand. The earliest Hellenic culture in the East was Syrian, and the Arabs made their first acquaintance with Greek chemistry, as with Greek philosophy, mathematics, medicine, etc., by the intermediary of Syriac translations. (See ARABIAN PHILOSOPHY and SYRIAC LITERATURE.) Examples of such translations are preserved in mss. at the British Museum, partly written in Syriac, partly in Arabic with Syriac characters. In Berthelot's opinion, the Syriac portion represents a compilation of receipts and proc esses undertaken in the Syrian school of medicine at Bagdad under the Abbasids in the 9th or loth century, and to a large extent constituted by the earlier translations made by Sergius of Resaena in the 6th century. They contain, under the title Doctrine of Democritus, a fairly methodical treatise in ten books compris ing the Argyropoeia and Chrysopoeia of the pseudo-Democ ritus, with many receipts for colouring metals, making artificial precious stones, effecting the diplosis or doubling of metals, etc. They give illustrations of the apparatus employed, and their close relationship to the Greek is attested by the frequent occurrence of Greek words and the fact that the signs and symbols of the Greek alchemists appear almost unchanged. The other portion seems of somewhat later date. Another Syriac ms., in the library of Cambridge university, contains a translation of a work by Zosimus which is so far unknown in the original Greek. Berthelot gives reproductions of the British Museum mss. in vol. ii. of La Chimie au moyen d ge.

Several alchemisticaI treatises, written in Arabic, exist in manu script in the National Library at Paris and in the library of the University of Leyden, and have been reproduced by Berthelot, with translations, in vol. iii. of La Chimie au moyen age. They fall into two groups: those in one are largely composed of compilations from Greek sources, while those in the other have rather the char acter of original compositions. Of the first group the most inter esting and possibly the oldest is the Book of Crates; it is remark able for containing some of the signs used for the metals by the Greek alchemists, and for giving figures of four pieces of appa ratus which closely resemble those depicted in Greek mss., the former being never, and the latter rarely, found in other Arabic mss. Its concluding words suggest that its production was due to Khalid ben Yezid (died in 7o8), who was a pupil of the Syrian monk Marianus, and according to the Kitclb-al-Fihrist was the first Muslim writer on alchemy. The second group consists of a number of treatises professing to be written by Jaber, celebrated in Latin alchemy as Geber (q.v.). Internal evidence suggests that they are not all from the same hand or of the same date, but probably they are not earlier than the 9th nor later than the izth century. The Arabic chroniclers record the names of many other writers on alchemy, among the most famous being Rhazes and Avicenna.

But the further development of alchemy took place in the West rather than in the East. With the spread of their empire to Spain the Arabs took with them their knowledge of Greek medicine and science, including alchemy, and thence it passed to the nations of western Europe, through the medium of Latin translations which began about the nth century. The Liber de compositione al chentiae, which professes to be by Morienus—perhaps the same as the Marianus who was the teacher of Khalid—was translated by Robertus Castrensis, who states that he finished the work in 1182. The earlier translations, such as the Turba Philosophorum and other works printed in collections like the Artis auriferae quam chemiam vocant 0572), Theatrum chemicum (1602), and J. J. Manget's Bibliotheca chemica curiosa (17o2), are confused productions, written in an allegorical style, but full of phrases and even pages taken literally from the Greek alchemists, and citing by name various authorities of Greek alchemy. They were f ol lowed by treatises of a different character, clearer in matter, more systematic in arrangement, and reflecting the methods of the scho lastic logic ; these are farther from the Greek tradition, for al though they contain sufficient traces of their ultimate Greek ances try, their authors do not know the Greeks as masters and cite no Greek names. So far as they are Latin versions of Arabico-Greek treatises, they must have been much remodelled in the course of translation; but there is reason to suppose that many of them, even when pretending to be translations, are really original compo sitions. It is curious that although we possess a certain number of works on alchemy written in Arabic, and also many Latin treatises that profess to be translated from Arabic, yet in no case is the ex istence known of both the Arabic and the Latin version. The Arabic works of Jaber, as contained in mss. at Paris and Leiden, are quite dissimilar from the Latin works attributed to Geber, and show few if any traces of the positive chemical knowledge, as of nitric acid (aqua dissolutiva or fortis) or of the mixture of nitric and hydrochloric acids known as aqua regis or regia, that appears in the latter. The treatises attributed to Geber, in fact, appear to be original works composed not earlier than the i3th century and fathered on Jaber in order to enhance their authority.' If this view be accepted, an entirely new light is thrown on the achievements of the Arabs in the history of chemistry, for the chemical knowledge attributed to the Arabs has been so attributed largely on the basis of the contents of the Latin Geber, regarded as a translation from the Arabic Jaber. If, then, those contents do not represent the knowledge of Jaber, and if the contents of other Latin translations, which there is reason to believe are really made from the Arabic, show little, if any, advance on the knowledge of the Alexandrian Greeks, evidently the part played by the Arabs must be less, and that of the Westerns greater, than is generally supposed.

The descent of alchemistical doctrine can thus be traced with fair continuity for a thousand years, from the Greeks of Alexan dria down to the time when Latin alchemy was firmly established in the West, and began to be written of by historical authors like Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon and Arnoldus Villanovanus in the i3th century. But side by side with this literary transmission Berthelot insists that there was another mode of transmission, by means of the knowledge of practical receipts and processes tradi tional among jewellers, painters, workers in glass and pottery, and other handicraftsmen. The chemical knowledge of Egyptian metal lurgists and jewellers, he holds, was early transmitted to the ar tisans of Rome, and was preserved throughout the dark ages in the workshops of Italy and France until about the i3th century, when it was mingled with the theories of the Greek alchemists which reached the West by way of the Arabs. Receipts given in the Leiden papyrus reappear in the Compositiones ad Tingenda and the Mappae Clavicula, both workshop receipt books, one known in an 8th-century ms. at Lucca, and the other in a ioth century ms. in the library of Schlettstadt ; and again in such works as the De Artibus Romanorum of Eraclius and the Schedula Diver sarurn Artium of Theophilus, belonging to the nth th or i 2th century.

Theory of Transmutation.

Thefundamental theory of the transmutation of metals is to be found in the Greek alchemists, although in details it was modified and elaborated by the Arabs and the Latin alchemists. Regarding all substances as being com posed of one primitive matter—the prima materia—and as owing their specific differences to the presence of different qualities im posed upon it, the alchemist hoped, by taking away these qualities, to obtain the prima materia itself, and then to get from it the par ticular substance he desired by the addition of the appropriate qualities. The prima materia was early identified with mercury, not ordinary mercury, but the "mercury of the philosophers," which was the essence or soul of mercury, freed from the four Aristotelian elements—earth, air, fire and water—or rather from the qualities which they represent. Thus the operator had to re move from ordinary mercury, earth or an earthy principle or qual ity, and water or a liquid principle, and to fix it by taking away air or a volatile principle. The prima materia thus obtained had to be treated with sulphur (or with sulphur and arsenic) to confer upon it the desired qualities that were missing. This sulphur again was not ordinary sulphur, but some principle derived from it, which constituted the philosopher's stone or elixir—white for silver and yellow or red for gold. This is briefly the doctrine that the metals are composed of mercury and sulphur, which persisted in one form or another down to the 17th century. Of course there were numer ous variations and refinements. Thus in the Speculum Naturale of Vincent of Beauvais (c. 12 50) it is said that there are four spirits—mercury, sulphur, arsenic and sal ammoniac—and six bodies—gold, silver, copper, tin, lead and iron. Of these bodies 'These conclusions, which are due mainly to Berthelot, have been criticized by E. J. Holmyard and by J. R. Partington (Nature, 1923, vol. iii., pp. 191, 219). The former believes Geber to have been Jabir ibn Haiyan (8th century) , and the latter believes the Latin works are correctly ascribed to Geber.

the first two are pure, the last four impure. Pure white mercury, fixed by the virtue of white non-corrosive sulphur, engenders in mines a matter which fusion changes into silver and united to pure clear red sulphur it forms gold, while with various kinds of impure mercury and sulphur the other bodies are produced. Vincent at tributes to Rhazes the statement that copper is potentially silver, and any one who can eliminate the red colour will bring it to the state of silver, for it is copper in outward appearance, but in its inmost nature silver. This statement represents a doctrine widely held in the i3th century, and also to be found in the Greek alche mists, that everything endowed with a particular apparent quality possesses a hidden opposite quality, which can be rendered appar ent by fire. Later, as in the works attributed to Basil Valentine, sulphur, mercury and salt are held to be the constituents of the metals.

It must be noted that the processes described by the alchemists of the i3th century are not put forward as being miraculous or supernatural; they rather represent the methods employed by nature, which it is the end of the alchemist's art to reproduce ar tificially in the laboratory. But even among the late Arabian alchemists it was doubted whether the resources of the art were adequate to the task; and in the West, Vincent of Beauvais re marks that success had not been achieved in making artificial metals identical with the natural ones. Thus he says that the silver which has been changed into gold by the projection of the red elixir is not rendered resistant to the agents which affect silver but not gold, and Albertus Magnus in his De Mineralibus—the De Alchemia attributed to him is spurious—states that alchemy cannot change species but merely imitates them—for instance, colours a metal white to make it resemble silver or yellow to give it the appearance of gold. He has, he adds, tested gold made by alchemists, and found that it will not withstand six or seven ex posures to fire. But scepticism of this kind was not universal. Roger Bacon—or more probably some one who usurped his name —declared that with a certain amount of the philosopher's stone he could transmute a million times as much base metal into gold, and on Raimon Lull was fathered the boast "Mare tingerem si mercurius esset." Later History of Alchemy.—Inthe earlier part of the i6th century Paracelsus gave a new direction to alchemy by declaring that its true object was not the making of gold but the prepara tion of medicines, and this union of chemistry with medicine was one characteristic of the iatrochemical school of which he was the precursor. Increasing attention was paid to the investigation of the properties of substances and of their effects on the human body, and chemistry profited by the fact that it passed into the hands of men who possessed the highest scientific culture of the time. Still, belief in the possibility of transmutation long remained orthodox, even among the most distinguished men of science. Thus it was accepted, at least academically, by Andreas Libavius (d. 1616) ; by F. de la Boe Sylvius (1614-72 ), though not by his pupil Otto Tachenius, and by J. R. Glauber (1603-68) ; by Robert Boyle (1627-91) and, for a time at least, by Sir Isaac Newton and his rival and contemporary, G. W. Leibnitz (1646-1716) ; and by G. E. Stahl (166o-1734) and Hermann Boerhaave (1668-1738). Though an alchemist, Boyle, in his Sceptical Chemist (1661), cast doubts on the "experiments whereby vulgar Spagyrists are wont to endeavour to evince their salt, sulphur and mercury to be the true principles of things," and advanced towards the conception of chemical elements as those constituents of matter which cannot be further decomposed. With J. J. Becher (1635-82) and G. E. Stahl, however, there was a reversion to earlier ideas. The former substituted for the salt, sulphur and mercury of Basil Valentine and Paracelsus three earths—the mercurial, the vitreous and the combustible—and he explained combustion as depending on the escape of this last combustible element ; while Stahl's conception of phlogiston—not fire itself, but the principle of fire—by virtue of which combustible bodies burned, was a near relative of the mercury of the philosophers, the soul or essence of ordinary mer cury.

Perhaps J. B. van Helmont was the last distin guished investigator who professed actually to have changed mer cury into gold, though impostors and mystics of various kinds con tinued to claim knowledge of the art long after his time. Since the early years of the loth century, however, the possibility of the transmutation of elements has entered upon a new phase. (See