From the Arabs A. found its way through Spain into Europe, and speedily became entangled with the fantastic subtleties of the scholastic philosophy. In the middle ages, it was chiefly the monks that occupied themselves with A. Pope John XXII. took great delight in it, though it was afterwards forbidden by his successor. The earliest authentic works on European A. now extant are those of Roger Bacon (b. 1214, d. 1284) and Albertus Magnus (b. 1205, d. 1280). Roger Bacon (q.v.) appears rather the earlier of the two as a writer, and is really the greatest man in all the school. Ile was acquainted with gunpowder. Although he condemns magic, necromancy, charms, and all such things, he believes in the convertibility of the inferior metals into gold, but does not profess to have ever effected the conversion. Iie had more faith in the elixir of life than in gold-making. He followed Gebir in regarding portable gold—that is, gold dissolved in nitro-hydroc]oric acid or aqua the elixir of life. Urging it on the attention of pope Nicholas IV., he informs his holiness of an old man who found some yellow liquor (the solution of gold is yellow) in a golden vial, when plowing one day in Sicily. Supposing it to be dew, lie drank it off. He was thereupon transformed into a hale, robust, and highly accomplished youth. Bacon no doubt took many a dose of this golden water himself.—Albertus Magnus (q.v.) had a great mastery of the practical chemistry of his times; he was acquainted with alum, caustic alkali, and the purification of the royal metals by means of lead. In addition to the sulphur-and-mercury theory of the metals, drawn from Gebir, he regarded the element water as still nearer the soul of nature than either of these bodies. He appears, indeed, to have thought it the primary matter, or the radical source of all things—an opinion held by Males, the father of Greek specu lation.—Thomas Aquinas (q.v.) also wrote on A., and was the first to employ the word amalgam (q.v.):—IlaymondIly (q.v.) is another great name in the annals of A. His writings are much more disfigured by unintelligible jargon than those of Bacon and Albertus Mangus. He was the first to introduce the'use of chemical symbols (q.v.), his system consisting of a scheme of arbitrary hieroglyphics. He made much of the spirit of wine (the art of distilling spirits would seem to have been then recent), imposing on it the name of aquace vitardens. In his enthusiasm, he pronounced it the very elixir of life. One of the most celebrated of the alchemists was Basil Valentine (q.v.), b. 1394, who introduced antimony into medical use. He, along with some previous alchemists, regarded salt, sulphur, and mercury as the three bodies contained in the metals. He inferred that the philosopher's stone must be the same sort of combination—a compound, namely, of salt, sulphur; and mercury; so pure, that its projection on the baser metals should be able to work them up into greater and greater purity, bringing them at last to the state of silver and gold. His practical knowledge was great; lie knew how to precipitate iron from solution by potash, and many similar processes, so that he is ranked as the founder of analytical chemistry.
But more famous than all was Paracelsus (q.v.), in whom A. proper may be said to have culminated. He held, with Basil Valentine, that the elements of compound bodies were salt, sulphur, and mercury—representing respectively earth, air, and water, fire being already regarded as an imponderable—but these substances were in his system purely representative. All kinds of matter were reducible under one or other of these typical forms; everything was either a salt, a sulphur, or a mercury. or, like the metals, it was a " mixt" or compound. There was one element, however, common to the four; a fifth essence or " quintessence" of creation ; an unknown and only true element, of which the four generic principles were nothing but derivative forms or embodiments: in other words, he inculcated the dogma that there is only one real elementary matter— nobody knows what. This one prime element of things lie appears to have considered to be the universal solvent of which the alchemists were in quest, and to express which he introduced the term word of unknown etymology, but supposed by some to be composed of the two German words alle geist, spirit." He seems to have had
the notion that if this quintessence or fifth element could be got at, it would prove to be at once the philosopher's stone, the universal medicine, and the irresistible solvent.
After Paracelsus. the alchemists of Europe became divided into two classes. The one class was composed of men of diligence and sense, who devoted themselves to the discovery of new compounds and reactions—practical workers and observers of facts, and the legitimate ancestors of the positive chemists of the era of Lavoisier. The other class took up the visionary, fantastical side of the older A., and carried it to a degree of extravagance before unknown. Instead pf useful work, they compiled mystical trash into books, and fathered them on Hermes, Aristotle, Albertus _Magnus, Paracelsus, and other really great men. Their language is a farrago of mystical metaphors, full of "red bridegrooms" and "lily brides," "green dragons," "ruby lions," "royal baths," " waters of life." The seven metals correspond with the seven planets, the seven cosmical angels, and the seven openings of the head—the eyes, the ears, the nostrils, and the mouth. Silver was Diana, gold was Apollo, iron was Mars, tin was Jupiter, lead was Saturn, and so forth. They talk foiever of the power of attraction, which drew all men and women after the possessor; of the alc.ahest, and the grand elixir, which was to confer immortal youth upon the student who should approve himself pure and brave enough to kiss and quaff the golden draught. There was the great mystery, the mother of the elements, the grandmother of the stars. There was the philosopher's stone, and there was the philosophical stone. The philosophical stone was younger than the elements, yet at her virgin touch the grossest calx (ore) among them all would blush before her into perfect gold. The philosopher's stone, on the other hand, was the first-born of nature, and older than the king of metals. Those who had attained full insight into the arcana of the science were styled wise; those who were only striving after the light were philoso phers; while the ordinary practicers of the art were called adepts. It was these vision aries that formed themselves into Rosicrucian societies and other secret associations. It was also in connection with this mock A., mixed up with astrology and magic, that quackery and imposture so abounded, is depicted by Scott in the character of Dousterswivel in the Antiquary. Designing knaves wmild, for instance, make up large nails, half of iron and half of gold, and tacker them, so that they appeared common nails, and when their credulous and avaricious dupes saw them extract from what seemed plain iron an ingot of gold, they were ready to advance any sum that the knaves pretended to be necessary for pursuing the process on a large scale. It is from this degenerate and effete school that the prevailing notion of A. is derived—a notion which is unjust to the really meritorious alchemists who paved the way for genuine chemistry.
It is interesting to observe that the leading tenet in the alchemists' creed—namely, the doctrine of the transmutability of other metals into gold and silver—a doctrine which it was at one time thought that modern chemistry had utterly exploded—receives not a little countenance from a variety of facts every day coming to light. The multi tude of phenomena known to chemists under the name of allotropy (q.v.), are leading speculative men more and more to the opinion that many substances hitherto considered chemically distinct, are only the same substance under some different condition or arrangement of its component molecules, and that the number of really distinct elements may be very few indeed. See Kopp's Geschichte der Cherie; Alchemy and the Alchem ists, by Dr. Samuel Brown, in Chambers's Papers for the People (No. 66); and the article ALCHEMY in the 9th ed. (1875) of the Encyclopa'dia Britannica.