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ALCHEMY

ALCHEMY. In the early modern period the term "alchemy" did not refer solely to the transmutation of metals. A variety of laboratory procedures, including the separation of metals, sublimations, and distillations, were generally described in alchemical terms, and alchemy had already for a long time been associated with making medicines. In this regard the medieval tradition of separating from substances a fifth essence, or quinta essentia, underscored later attempts among Hermeticists and Paracelsians to extract a celestial, life-giving force from plants, animals, and metals that, in turn, could perfect specific bodies. The sulfur-mercury theory, based in Aristotelian natural philosophy and further articulated by Arab scholars, in which all metals were believed to be composed of an original sulfur and mercury in various degrees of purity, also continued to provide a basis for some alchemical discussions. The extent to which Aristotelian principles continued to influence practical alchemical procedures is well illustrated by a text called Alchemia written in 1597 by a German physician, chemist, and schoolmaster named Andreas Libau (c. 1550–1616). Libau's book looks very modern, and has been referred to as the first textbook of modern chemistry. It teaches, among many other things, how to analyze minerals, metals, and mineral waters, how to make use of assaying techniques, and how to prepare medicines from metals and minerals. It describes analytical reactions, presents quantitative methods for determining alloys, and gives precise instructions on how to build a variety of laboratory furnaces and vessels. It also describes extracts and essences at the same time that it provides evidence for various sorts of transmutation. All of this falls under the heading of alchemy.

HERMETICISM AND PARACELSUS

At the same time as some alchemists were being led by older theories to create new chemical technologies, others were inspired by more spiritual traditions, especially by the legacy of Neoplatonism and by the discovery in the second half of the fifteenth century of texts reputed to have been written by an ancient sage named Hermes Trismegistus. The tradition that followed, called Renaissance Hermeticism, viewed the celestial bodies, sometimes through the mediation of a cosmic spirit (spiritus mundi), as the link between God and terrestrial things. Divine virtues penetrated everything in nature, and the Hermetic alchemist sought to extract such powers and virtues particularly for the purpose of making useful medicines. A very similar idea prompted the thinking of an especially significant figure in the history of early modern alchemy, Paracelsus (1493/94–1541). Paracelsus described the creation of the physical universe and the processes that maintained the life of the body in essentially alchemical terms. All of nature stemmed from an initial separation of light from dark, earth from water, and so on, and the body operated by means of an "inner alchemist," called the archeus, which separated that which was pure and helpful to the maintenance of life from that which was not. Regarding transmutation, Paracelsus, like many others, thought in embracive terms. In a work called De Natura Rerum (On the nature of things) he notes, "transmutation is when a thing loses its form or shape and is transformed so that it no longer displays at all its initial form and substance. . . . When a metal becomes glass or stone . . . when wood becomes charcoal . . . [or] . . . when cloth becomes paper . . . all of that is the transmutation of natural things." By this definition almost everyone in the early modern period was engaged in alchemy. "Nature," Paracelsus adds, "brings nothing to light which is completed in itself, rather, human beings have to do the completing. This completing is called alchemy." To complete the work of nature and to delve into her secrets Paracelsus recommended the processes of distillation, calcination (producing a powdery calx, or oxide, usually by heating a metal), and sublimation (heating to a gaseous state and then condensing a vapor into solid form). Through these one could separate the elements and discover the healing and perfecting tinctures, magisteria (substances whose external impurities had been removed and which were then said to be exalted or ennobled), and arcana (divine secrets) within things, and learn about the generative qualities associated with the first principles of creation, the socalled tria prima: salt, sulfur, and mercury.

The art of separation was, for Paracelsus and his followers, the key to knowledge of both natural philosophy and medicine; in this regard Paracelsus distinguished between what he called alchemia transmutatoria and alchemia medica. Both types of alchemy involved looking for a powerful agent capable of perfecting or healing. That agent had long gone by several names, including elixir, grand magisterium, or philosophers' stone, and in the early modern period different traditions traced this agent to specific material origins. One tradition linked to Paracelsus sought to prepare the elixir or stone from "vitriol." Others, who followed in the tradition of an alchemical writer named Michael Sendivogius (1566–1636), referred to niter. A third tradition, which included the authors Jean d'Espagnet, Alexander von Suchten, Gaston DuClo, and Eirenaeus Philalethes (a pseudonym for George Starchy), pursued processes involving vitriol (sometimes called the remedy of the Green Lion) and mercury.

Works by an author using the name Basilius Valentinus directed attention to the use of antimony in alchemical operations, and those writings supplied seventeenth-century chemical physicians with much information about compounding medicines from antimony. Panaceas of various sorts boasted alchemical heritage; one of the most famous was the drinkable gold (aurum potabile) described, among others, by Angelo Sala, Francis Anthony, and Johann Rudolf Glauber (1604–1668). Producing medicines by means of chemical synthesis was a direct outgrowth of alchemical and Paracelsian practices. Both came together as a university subject early in the seventeenth century when Johannes Hartmann (1568–1631) was appointed public professor of chemiatria (chemical medicine) at the University of Marburg. Hartmann's patron, the German prince Moritz, landgrave of Hesse-Kassel (ruled 1592–1627), was one of a number of European potentates, including several Medici princes and the Holy Roman emperor Rudolf II (ruled 1576–1612), at whose courts alchemical projects served economic, political, and aesthetic ambitions. In England, traditions of alchemy and Paracelsianism came together in the hands of social critics and educational reformers. Samuel Hartlib (c. 1600–1662), Jan Amos Comenius (1592–1670), and the dramatist John Webster (c. 1580–c. 1625) each acknowledged the practical results of alchemical labors. Webster especially concluded that the traditions of medieval alchemy and Paracelsus should find a place within the university as an "art that doth help more truly and radically to . . . discover the secret principles and operations of nature." Outside the court and academy, alchemy in various forms continued to be part of the everyday business of popular culture, reflected in vernacular pharmacy books, books of secrets, and a variety of household manuals.

The Bible itself could be read as an alchemical text. One frequent reference was to the book of Exodus, where Moses grinds up the golden calf and gives it (as a kind of aurum potabile) to the children of Israel to drink. The knowledge of Moses, received from Egyptian priests, reflected, many thought, a prisca sapientia, an ancient pure wisdom that had been corrupted over time, but which, through the comparison of texts with experience, might be discovered again.

ALCHEMY AND MODERN SCIENCE

As an artifact of the early modern period, alchemy continued to exert an influence throughout the scientific revolution. Robert Boyle (1627–1691) and Isaac Newton (1642–1727) both pursued alchemical programs. That Boyle accepted the reality of transmutation and the validity of claims about the powers of the philosophers' stone is clear from an unpublished dialogue on the transmutation of metals. There opponents of transmutation are soundly refuted with the report of an "anti-elixir" that, when projected onto molten gold, transmutes it into base metal. Among Boyle's papers are hundreds of pages of laboratory processes, many related to metallic transmutations and largely written in code. In one instance he wrote a precise account of a transmutation that he had personally witnessed. To Boyle, the corpuscular philosophy, which defined matter as composed of tiny particles, was not at all inconsistent with alchemical ideas. Transmutations took place, he argued, when changes took place in the sizes, shapes, and motions of the particles of an original matter.

Another adherent of alchemy and corpuscularianism was Isaac Newton. The largest particles of every sort of matter, he theorized, were composed of very subtle sulfurous or acid particles surrounded by larger earthy or mercurial particles, the latter piled up like rings or shells around the volatile center. Every substance, he held, was composed of particles analogous to tiny universes. Transmutation resulted when the larger particles of a substance were reduced to smaller particles and then rearranged. Newton was also fond of ancient texts, especially those related to the Egyptian magus Hermes, and he collected bits and pieces of alchemical wisdom in the form of transcriptions, extracts, and collations of ancient, medieval, and contemporary alchemical authorities. He labored over the construction of an index chemicus, an inventory of chemical and alchemical writing arranged by topic that, in its final form, comprised a volume of more than a hundred pages, with 879 separate headings. Another text of "Notable Opinions" consisted of quotations from seventy-five printed and handwritten alchemical sources. The alchemist George Starchy described to him the concept of chemical mediation (the means by which two unsociable bodies are made sociable by means of a third) and recounted also for Newton procedures for making philosophical mercury and for preparing an antimonial amalgam called the "star regulus." Accepting the presence of spiritual agents in nature, Newton thought that metals could both grow and decay as part of a cycle of creation in which the return to chaos gave rise to new substances.

See also Hermeticism; Magic; Matter, Theories of; Paracelsus; Scientific Revolution.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Dobbs, Betty Jo Teeter. The Foundations of Newton's Alchemy. Cambridge, U.K., 1975.

Kopp, Hermann. Die Alchemie. 1886; rept. Hildesheim, 1971.

Martels, Z. R. W. M. von, ed., Alchemy Revisited. Leiden, 1990.

Principe, Lawrence M. The Aspiring Adept. Princeton, 1998.

Principe, Lawrence M., and William R. Newman. "Some Problems with the Historiography of Alchemy," in Secrets of Nature: Astrology and Alchemy in Early Modern Europe, ed. by W. R. Newman and Anthony Grafton. Cambridge, Mass., 2001, pp. 385–431.

BRUCE T. MORAN