| Show ALCHEMY if the ou question estion were asked you what one thing in the civilized world is sought after most it is probable that the substance of nearly all your replies would be very much the same namely wealth money and to most people especially those who live in the west the idea of money at once suggests gold and silver it is of these metals that people eople think talk and perhaps at times dream am it is for these that m men en toil plan scheme and too often stake love honor elan onor all and without inquiring into the question whether or not the mania for gold is more prevalent now than formerly it is enough for our present purpose to say that it has perhaps always been the chief desideratum of civilized men the original source to which men now turn for wealth in the form of gold and silver is in the bowels of the earth but these metals have not always been sought for here exclusively there was a time in the history of the world not long since past when men thought they could create gold and silver called noble metals from lead copper tin mercury etc usually spoken of as base metals and it is the purpose of your speaker to ask your indulgent attention for a short bort time while an outline of the history of such attempts is gether with a brief consideration of the reasons which led to the attempts the art by which the noble metals gold and silver were to be made from the base ones such as lead and copper is known as alchemy it may be well to say however that this art was nothing but a division of chemistry and indeed for centuries it was considered to be almost identical with chemistry that is to say chemistry was then regarded as the art of making the noble metals it is customary now however to call the subject alchemy during the time that making gold and silver was regarded as its chiet chief aim that very important science which we call chemistry may be said therefore to have had its origin in in the efforts to make the precious metals gold and silver hence in following the history of alchemy we will be following follow ipg in a general way the history of chemistry until near the close of the alchemistic period when chemistry and alchemy parted company but we shall find that alchemy did not long survive the separation from what has been said it will be readily understood that the problems of alchemy were regarded as the problems of chemistry but the problems and aims of chemistry have not always been the same and it is due to differences va aim that the history of the science may be divided into periods five of which are recognizable the alchemistic period briod however extending from the erst first centuries of our era to the sixteenth is longer than all the others combined if now we seek the source from which originated the idea that base metals like lead and copper can be changed or transmitted into the doble ones gold and silver we shall first of all have to look the speculations of ancient grecian philosophers relative to the material world and especially to the ultimate constitution of matter though their views upon the elements and the composition of substances were various we need perhaps consider here only those th ose bearing the name of aristotle who lived in the fourth century B C lor for the so called aristotelian doctrine of the elements which doctrine however was originated by empedocles nearly a cen tury before Arist otles time was the one which was universally accepted and which continued to be regarded as the highest expression of scientific truth throughout the middle ages according to this view all kinds of substances are made up offous off our elements earth air fire and ancl water aristotle himself hi did not look upon these so called elements as different kinds of matter but as different properties carried about by bv one original matter the chief qualities of the elements he held to be those apparent to the touch namely warmth coldness dryness and moisture each of the four elements is characterized by the possession of two of these properties air being warm and moist earth cold and dry fire dry and warm and water moist and cold every material substance according to this view is composed of the same kind of matter but with these four properties represented by the four elements present in various proportions in different substances that is to say for any one substance the amount of these different properties present is constant for that substance in a particular condition but the amounts in one substance differ from the proportions in another afterwards it was pointed out that every substance has a property peculiar to itself This Aristolle Aristotle then said is due tow te the quinta es senda or fifth essence which he regarded as being imma immaterial in its nat ureThe nature the een one substance and another are due solely to different proportions of these proper ties contained in the substances but it was assumed that these properties catt can alter therefore it follows that one sub 3 stance can be changed into another thus water represents moisture and coldness air warmth and moisture these elements have the property moisture in common and coldness the individual property of water can cala be changed b by 1 heat into warmth the individual prope property 9 of air hence water can be changed into air from speculations of this kind it is aas easy to see how the belief became firmly fixed fixed that one sab substance stance can be changed into another indeed such changes were thought to be i L matter of every day occurrence 4 before proceeding further it may be well to digress in order to glance at them position of modern science in reference to the elements an element is now dei fined as being a substance that cannot by y any means be decomposed int into simpler substances thus defined go goll silver copper lead in shorts short all the metal are elements for the application of all known means such as beat elec triciti tri city solvents and others of splitting substances up into simpler bodies h has 1 failed to produce simpler products fr fronts ow these metals so far as known the world is composed of about seven seventy elements either free or combi combined otto one 1 I with another but many of these le ele ments are rare the common conesor ones or those that make up the bulk of the world almost entirely being a about twelve in number As a rule the elet ete ments are combined one substance con coir in general of from two to five elements chemically united water for example consists ot of but two elements elemen oxygen and hydrogen marble if pure 1 of three quartz quarts of two and air of a mixture of two nitrogen and oxygen A new element is occasionally di discovered iscove redL so that the exact number of elements of which the world is 18 composed is not nota known further it is entirely possible that some of our elements may some day be found to be compounds being 1 decomposed decompose dby by means as yet unknown for many substances that were formerly thought to be elements have been proved S roved since to be chemical compounds ty y decomposing them into simpler bodies but since an element cannot be decomposed it follows that it cannot bea W changed into another element it may however unite with other elements to produce chemical compounds hence since gold and silver are elements to anticipate somewhat they cannot P possibly be made from other elements such as lead and copper the task of the alchemist therefore was a fruitless one so far as transmutation of metals was concerned but his work was not entirely without valuable results for it brought to light many important chemical facts but it may be asked how the ancients obtained such erroneous ideas of the elements we do not have to look long for the answer it is because their method was purely speculative their theories were not founded upon long and pains taking experiments such as are nowa days held to be b indispensable for the basis of any hypothesis they were very inac much more free with the imagination than are the scientific men of today though h they were entirely without experimental peri mental data this did not deter them from speculating upon the nature of the universe instead of drawing conclusions arom from accurately observed facts they infinitely preferred to call specula tion to their aid by which they did not to attempt au an explanation of the ul ultimate i ate reasons of all things this lack of the gift of observation says von meyer this disinclination to go to the root of any phenomena in fact a certain ip indifference difference with regard to the natural events are characteristic of the ancients with respect to nature the most mischievous errors crept in as a consequence the most superficial observations gave rise to opinions which wizen rhen uttered by high authorities obtained to the dignity of dogmas how otherwise than from an utter lack 0 abs observation can one explain Arist otles assertion that a vessel filled with ashes jaw 9 ill hold as much water as one which is empty A further instance of the cre ag douty aty of that time is given in the con action diction expressed by pliny and universally held beld that air can be transformed ilja water and vice aversa versa that earth is produced from water and that rock crystal proceeds from the latter now how if substances so unlike one another nn other as air and water change one in fa the other how natural it is to suppose baat dt one metal can be changed into Wa another other since metals do not biffer from abe one another apparently as much as do WW fir and water and as said before the ancients considered that the change of water ater into air was a matter of every day observation what else could it be than ar being chat changed ged into water when clouds ad were formed from the invisible atmosphere and were condensed into ater and tell fell as rain further water rf in a vessel exposed to the summer sew disappeared and clouds were seen ta tool vanis vanish h from view were these not of water being changed into air aad in regard to their belief that earth arth produced ih from water it may blaid be said dow this idea was proved to be erroneous a litt lift e more than a hundred years ft it has been observed that when benthe jen the purest water was heated for jilt time in id A glass vessel and finally to dryness that an earthy residue found in the bottom of the vessel eftia seemed t to be ample proof that of the water at least had changed Mft W earth and it was not until about that at the true explanation of this given when the cheat french chemist lavoisier proved wms t this his earthy residue was due to the water dissolving some of the glass 11 1 Alt although bough the ancient greek ahers boners did not themselves teach that metals may be transmuted one into another er yet this doctrine was readily VP reduced cej subsequently from what they qed teach that substances change into other substances yet aside from any speculations peculations of this nature there were superficial observations of a practical kind which appeared to give a strong support to the belief in such transmute SINUS among such accidental observations was that of the deposition of copper r f from r om the water which accumulated 1 in the copper mines upon iron Us left eft therein what more natural poem hian to conclude that a i transmutation rans mutation of iron into copper had bad occurred we now know however that a compound of copper was in solution in the water and that the iron simply displaced the copper in its compound leaving the co copper p cpr to be deposited upon the remaining iron the experiment is easily tried if a clean iron nail is put into a solution of 0 blue compound of copper a deposit of the latter metal is seen to form on the nail chemical analysis enables us to learn that for every particle of copper deposited upon the nail one of iron has gone into solution to displace the copper from its compound no change of iron into copper consequently has occurred for there is just as much iron alter after the change as before only some of it exists in a different condition namely in combination dissolved in the water again for the production of gold or silver from copper the transformation of the latter into yellow or white alloys by fusion with earthy substances such as calai calamine nine or arsenic appeared to give warrant finally the fact that a residue of gold or silver remained behind when an alloy with lead or an amalgam with mercury was strongly heated I 1 indicated the generation of those noble metals thus a residue of silver is nearly always found when galena the chief ore of lead is heated sufficiently the ancients believed that those these noble metals resulted from the actual transmutation of the lead it is now known however that falena galena is is seldom found entirely free from r m them but when and where were the first efforts made to effect the transmutation of the base metals into the noble As we have seen the idea of the possibility of one thing changing into another essentially different was prevalent in very early times at le astas early as the fifth century B C but we have no definite information as to when and where the first attempts were made to trans mute the base metals into gold and silver it is common however to think of ancient egypt as the motherland of alchemy yet the beginnings of this art as the beginnings ot of other branches of knowledge of ancient date are associated with mythical and mystical traditions but we find among various nations dis signs of alchemy having been been practiced as a secret art and having been held in honor when it is remembered that ancient egypt was a center for the higher culture and that it was a country where the low lew chemical processes known were practiced it is natural to look there for the earliest reliable records of alchemy and there we find them but these earliest records few and not go back evidently to the time when the first alchemistic efforts were made the earliest historical proofs we have of the origin of alchemy came to us through the layden papyrus and the writings of the Alexand rians trofi the third to the fifth century A D in some of these writings of the fourth century the word sword chemi first occurs as the name of the art which treats of the production of gold and silver artificially but arch states that the old name for egypt was chemi a name given to it on account of the dark color of its soil the same word was also used to designate the black of the eye as the symbol of the dark and mysterious it is certain therefore that chemi now chem astry originally meant egyptian of secret knowledge as it was afterwards termed the secret or black art the pr prefix e x al attached some centuries later making the word alchemy is due to the arabians of the seventh century according to a tradition universally diffused in the first centuries of our era the art of ennobling the metals with other kno knowledge wedge was brought irom from heaven to earth by demons in the writings of zisimos Zo simos an alexandrian author of the fifth century is found the name of the mystical book brought from heaven containing the coveted knowledge later there were traditions among the al chemists of the middle ages referring rel erring the origin of their art back to a time before the flood of course it was supposed that a special sanctity would accrue to the art by reason of this great age moreover on in the supposed authority of certain pas sages in holy writ certain biblical ch characters arac were written down as alche mists lor for instance moses and the evangelist john when ideas such as then gained credence in the middle ages in a time when blind fanaticism was looked upon as a virtue it is no wonder that the false doctrines of alchemy were so enthusiastically enthusiastic enthusiastically all accepted and that so many gifter gifted me men gave themselves up to a pursuit of its illusory |
