AL'CKEMY is to modern chemistry what astrology is to astronomy, or legend to his tory. In the eye of the astrologer, a knowledge of the stars was valuable only as a means of foretelling, or even of influencing, future events. In like manner, the genuine alche mist toiled with his crucibles and alembics, calcining, subliming, distilling, not with a view to discover the chemical properties of substances, as we understand them, but with two grand objects, as illusory as those of the astrologer—to discover, namely, (1) the secret of transmuting the baser metals into gold and silver, and (2) the means of indefinitag prolonging human life.
Tradition points to Egypt as the birthplace of the science. Hermes Trismegistus (q.v.) is represented as the father of it; and the most probably etvmology of the name is that which connects it with the most ancient and native name of Egypt, Chemi (the Scrip ture Cham or Ham). The Greeks and Romans under the empire would seem to have become acquainted with it from the Egyptians ; there is no reason to believe that, in early times, either people had the name or the thing. Chemia (Gr. chemeia) occurs in the lexicon of Suidas, written in the llth c., and is explained by him to be " the conversion of silver and gold." It is to the Arabs, from whom Europe got the name and the art, that we owe the prefixed article al. As if chemia had been a generic term embracing all common chemical operations, such as the decocting and compounding of ordinary drugs, the grand operation of transmutation was denominated the chemia (al-cheiny)—the chemis try of chemistries. The Roman emperor Caligula is said to have instituted experiments for the producing of gold out of orpiment (sulphuret of arsenic); and in the time of Diocletian, the passion for this pursuit, conjoined with magical arts, bad become so prevalent in the empire, that that emperor is said to have ordered all Egyptian works treating of the chemistry of gold and silver to be burnt. For at that time, multitudes of books on this art were appearing, written by Alexandrine monks and by hermits, but bearing famous names of antiquity, such as Demoeritus, Pythagoras, and I fermes.
At a later period, the Arabs took up the art; and it is to them that European A. is directly traceable. The school of polypharmaey, as it has been called, flourished in
Arabia during the caliphates of the Abbasides. The earliest work of this school now known is the Summa Perfections, or "Summit of Perfection," composed by Gehir (q.v.) in the 8th c. ; it is consequently the oldest book on chemistry proper in the world. It contains so much of what sounds very much like jargon in our ears, that Dr. Johnson ascribes the origin of the word "gibberish" to the name of the compiler. Yet when viewed in its true light, it is a wonderful performance. It is a kind of text-book, or collection of all that was then known and believed. It appears that these Arabian poly pharmists had long been engaged in firing and boiling, dissolving and precipitating, subliming and coagulating chemical substances. They worked with gold and mercury, arsenic and sulphur, salts and acids; and had, in short, become familiar with a large range of what are now called chemicals. Gebir taught that there arc three elemental chemicals--inurcury, sulphur, and arsenic. These substances, especially the first two, seem to have fascinated the thoughts of the alchemists by their potent and penetrating qualities. They saw mercury dissolve gold, the most incorruptible of matters, as water dissolves sugar; and a stick of sulphur presented to hot iron penetrates it like a spirit, and makes it run down in a shower of solid drops, a new and remarkable substance, possessed of properties belonging neither to iron nor to sulphur. The Arabians held that the metals are compound bodies, made up of mercury and sulphur in different proportions. With these very excusable errors in theory, they were genuine practical chemists. They toiled away at the art of making •: many medicines" (polypharmacy) out of the various mixtures and reactions of such chemicals as they knew. They had their pestles and mortars, their crucibles and furnaces, their alembics and aludels, their vessels for infusion, for decoction, for cohabitation, sublimation, fixation, lixiviation, filtration, coagulation, etc. Their scientific creed was transmutation, and their methods were mostly blind gropings; and yet, in this way, they found out many a new body, and invented many a useful process.