Science
 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 Empedoclesthat all things are composed of air, earth,
 fire, and waterwas 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 AD 250-300) 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 (R) Encarta. Copyright (c) 1994 Microsoft Corporation.
 Copyright (c) 1994 Funk & Wagnall's Corporation.
 
 