The Chemistry of Alchemy Page 13

  This switching of positions is also known as the oxidation/reduction process, two terms of historical origin. Metal ores are compounds, that is, metal ions in combination with other elements, such as oxygen. When the metals are smelted, a process in which the ores are heated in charcoal until the metals are released from their ore matrix, the metals are said to be reduced because they weigh less without their oxygen. Where does the oxygen go? It combines with and is carried away by the carbon in the charcoal as carbon dioxide gas, which means the carbon is oxidized.

  Not that the alchemists realized any of this—yet. They were, for the nonce, concerned with other growths: homunculi.

  THE HOMUNCULUS

  The theme of inanimate materials gaining life and growing, like the Tree of Diana, recurs often in alchemical thought. And like many other notions of western-European alchemy, the origins can be found in the Jabirian corpus. Another alchemical idea with its root in the Jabirian corpus, but perhaps the most twisted root among the tangle, is the idea of an artificially produced human being.15 Though the Jabirians mentioned the idea as a vague notion, the imagination of the western Europeans fleshed it out and gave it a name, the homunculus.

  Though possibly partially built on German and Jewish folklore, the idea of the homunculus as Paracelsus conceived it, a small, artificially generated human being, was the alchemists’ creation. Paracelsus was certifiably eccentric in a gullible age, so in his self-promotional writings, the homunculus found a home. Although not always mentioned by Paracelsus's more supportive biographers, we believe Paracelsus's involvement with the homunculus offers an insight into his personality and intellectual milieu.

  Paracelsus did not invent the idea of the homunculus—writers of the thirteenth century included homunculi in their surveys of magic—and the idea did not end with him either. The homunculus surfaces in Goethe's Faustus of the nineteenth century and other later writings. Partington reported alchemical swindlers would carve models from bones, place them in sealed bottles, and claim they were the remains of these poor creatures who had died from neglect.16 Of all the oddities associated with this tale, this has to be the oddest. We believe if we ever had a homunculus, we would remember to feed it.

  Paracelsus, however, adds precautions concerning care and feeding to his description of the process (perhaps as the age-old guard against failure of the recipe). Homunculi, he asserted, were perfectly possible (nearly routine), and, “in order to accomplish it, you must proceed thus:”

  Let the semen of a man putrefy by itself in a sealed cucurbite with the highest putrefaction of the [horse's stomach] for forty days, or until it begins at last to live, move and be agitated, which can easily be seen. After this time it will be in some degree like a human being, but, nevertheless, transparent and without body. If now, after this, it be every day nourished and fed cautiously and prudently with the Arcanum of human blood, and kept for forty weeks in the perpetual and equal heat of a [horse's stomach], it becomes thenceforth a true and living infant, having all the members of a child that is born from a woman, but much smaller.17

  The description goes on to explain how one would then raise and educate the homunculus, with one important, implicit, caveat: the creature must forever remain within its bottle. Never free of its artificial womb.

  Joseph du Chesne, a Paracelsian of the age we visit next, also reported a way to create life, but his approach was slightly different. Du Chesne claimed to have brought a complete plant back to life after it had been burned to ashes. The flask containing a solution with the plant's remains was heated with a candle until the spectral form of the plant could be seen. When the heat was removed, the plant disappeared. Du Chesne also reported a friend of his was able to burn nettles, disperse the ashes in water, and then freeze the mixture to see thousands of whole, miniature nettle plants in the ice.18

  This process, the re-creation of a plant from its ashes, has a name: palingenesis. Palindrome is a word that reads the same spelled backward or forward, and palingenesis means growing a plant or an animal from its ashes, which is a sort of backward/forward thing, too.

  These du Chesne demonstrations, then, will be our exhibitions of artificial generation: the plant in the bottle and the plant in ice. No homunculus, sorry. Couldn't conveniently procure a horse stomach. Please believe that was the problem.

  Guess what! If you guessed safety glasses, you are right. Burn some dried plant material (like paper) to ash and put the ash in a glass container. Fill the container with water. Find a fairly substantial candle to use as a heat source. Alternatively, you can use stove-burner heat, but the candle makes one feel more in league with the alchemists.

  Wearing work gloves, hold your bottle of water and ashes over the heat. Keep the contact point of flame with the bottle as constant as possible. Eventually the localized heating should set up a convection current that lifts the lighter ash high while stirring the heavier pieces below. If one suspends one's belief (and perhaps has a shot of quintessence), it is possible to imagine what the alchemists may have imagined: the ghostly form of a reincarnated plant, wonderfully returned to life.

  Now take some of the ash and mix it again with water, but this time pour the result in a shallow glass bowl or tin. Place it in the freezer and give it the requisite four hours or so to freeze. When you retrieve your ash-water ice cube, you should see some sequestering of the ash into branching regions of the ice. The ash pushes into veins in the freezing water because of the freezing-point depression that occurs in solutions. For instance, antifreeze works because it is a solution rather than pure water. Salting an icy road helps not only because of the added traction but also because the salt dissolves in the water film on ice and makes a solution, which has a lower melting point and thus may aid in further melting the ice. For a more elaborate explanation of this phenomenon, please consult one of the books recommended in the bibliography under the heading “Explications of Chemistry.”

  To synopsize, any pure water at the edges of the mixture has the higher freezing point, so it freezes first and pushes the ash-laden water to the center, where it freezes last. With a less-than-critical eye, one could see how the resulting pattern in the ice might be taken to resemble a plant, though agreeing with the comment by the Paracelsian that it “resemble[s] the original…in every detail”19 may require another dose of quintessence.

  Nonetheless, the Paracelsians strove on with new mission and renewed enthusiasm. We will enjoy their adventures in part 3.

  An alchemist performing a transmutation for Rudolf II. (Image used by permission of Edgar Fahs Smith History of Chemistry Collection. Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania.)

  Before Paracelsus came along, the art of alchemy languished. The search for the philosophers’ stone had come up empty-handed, and the artisans could test and refute any claims of alchemical gold. Yet there were still sincere alchemists who believed in the possibility of transmutation, and they felt they were close. They just needed a few more days…months…years at the fires…If they could find a patron…But before Paracelsus came on the scene, patrons were increasingly hard to come by.

  Then, when Paracelsus announced alchemy could be used to make medicines, there was the sound of applause—mostly from alchemists. Here was a new angle! If they could get paid to make medicines, they could stay at their fires…

  But not everyone applauded.

  The problem was new humanism promoted the study of ancient Greek and Roman thought—but in the original languages and without the filter of the Church commentators—therefore the humanist admired Galen and the ancient authorities as much as Paracelsus had not.

  One of the reasons for the humanist's tenacity was the Western Schism of the Catholic Church, which occurred at the cusp of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. For almost forty years there were two popes, both claiming ultimate authority, which caused confusion and weakened the Church. Like adolescent children of a poorly managed divorce, the western-European intellectuals rebelled wit
h a reformation and a return to previously prohibited reading materials. The problem for Paracelsians was that the western Europeans were proud of their newfound freedom and didn't want to hear one of their newfound friends, Galen, was wrong. Galen fit into the new worldview. Paracelsus did not.

  Ironically, the Paracelsians did not respond as perhaps Paracelsus would have.

  Instead of emulating Paracelsus and attacking the Galenic notion of medicine—out with the bad stuff through bowels, pores, bladder, vein, or wherever until the humors were adjusted—they said their medicines adjusted humors, too. Only better.

  They were right. An old-fashioned herbal laxative might work well, but concentrated alchemical salts worked really well. If an emetic was the prescription, nothing brought on regurgitation like alchemical mixtures of mercury with vitriol. And the impressive purgative power of alchemical antimony could clear every orifice.

  Some Paracelsians, remembering their hero's admonition that the dosage determines the poison, kept their remedies down to drops and enjoyed the success of doing no harm. Others, however, were soon doubling the doses to produce the effects that the patients wanted. In addition, the Paracelsians could say that their medicines were Christian, not pagan like Galen, which, given the surges in occult paranoia appearing in the 1500s and 1600s, was a definite selling point.

  Gradually the Paracelsians began to carry the day. Perhaps predictably, though they owed their quasi-legitimacy to Paracelsus's medical ideals, they soon veered and used the name Paracelsian as a cover for multifarious projects. In part 3, we will meet physicians and professors who followed Paracelsus, but also quacks and empirics, charlatans and mystics, enterprisers, flatterers, connivers, and believers—and one other breed of practitioner: the Paracelsian women.

  Women have never been absent from healing, and they were not missing from western-European tradition either. Women were brewers, herbalists, and household healers, but in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries they had reason to be reticent to publically display their art. Occult, nonstandard practices were associated with witchcraft, and women's skills, previously valued, even lauded, gained a sinister shade. As “witches,” they were summarily hunted, hanged, and burned.

  But a woman has to get by.

  When it became risky to identify herself as a healer, she would call herself a Paracelsian—and it is with these remarkable women we begin.

  She was a lover of the Study and practice of Alchimy,…she delighted in the Distilling of waters, and other Chymical extractions, for she had some knowledge in most kinds of Minerals, herbs, flowers and plants.

  Anne Clifford, writing about her mother,

  Margaret Clifford, ca. 1652*

  If we count alchemists by the documents they produce, then it would be reasonable to assume few women practiced alchemy in the post-Paracelsian era. But as historian Tara Nummedal pointed out, “If…we shift our focus beyond printed alchemical texts and toward…letters, contracts and criminal trial dossiers [we find] that both noble and common women engaged in the patronage, theory and practice of alchemy.”1 Where Nummedal pointed, we shifted, and we found the heroes of this chapter in manuscript, in print, in letters, and, sadly, in criminal-trial dossiers.

  Yet we start our conversation on Paracelsian women with a man: Joseph du Chesne (ca. 1530–1609). Du Chesne, also known as Quercetanus, was the Frenchman who created the plant version of a homunculus, called a palingenesis, that we demonstrated last chapter.2 We begin with him because he had a daughter, and the only name we have for the daughter is “the daughter of du Chesne.”

  THE DAUGHTER OF DU CHESNE

  Our evidence the daughter of du Chesne practiced alchemy comes from Penny Bayer, the author of the essay “From Kitchen Hearth to Learned Paracelsianism: Women and Alchemy in the Renaissance.”3 According to Bayer, a document titled “Quercitan's Daughter's Letters” contains discussions of alchemical theory and practice. As part of her practice, she detailed a window she added to her apparatus so she could watch color changes from white to “oriental purpurean red,”4 and she outlined methods for fabricating silver and gold from mercury.

  Figure 9.1. The title page of Newe Jewell of Health, printed ca. 1570. (Image courtesy of Roy G. Neville Historical Chemical Library, Chemical Heritage Foundation Collections.)

  Quercetanus's daughter's used in her process a powder of projection, a material that was becoming a common rabbit in the alchemist's hat, along with elixirs and philosophers’ stones. Supposedly, a powder of projection was a material capable of transmuting a metal into silver and gold when added at a critical point in a process. Unfortunately, in an occurrence also common in the day, she lost the powder when she fell asleep in exhaustion and a delinquent servant let the fire go out. Obliquely, this incident actually lends credence to her claim to the fraternity/sorority of alchemists: while at their fires, the alchemists were always conscious that the patron provided the next piece of coal, and they knew, not unlike the present funding process for arts and sciences, a patron wanted to hear at least a hint of progress. So we will find, occasionally, success achieved!—but unfortunately the proof was lost in a workroom disaster…from an otherwise careful alchemist.

  Proof of progress was less paramount, of course, if you happened to be wealthy enough to patronize yourself, as in the case of our next scholar, Lady Clifford, Countess of Cumberland.

  LADY MARGARET CLIFFORD, COUNTESS OF CUMBERLAND

  For a good while, a collection known as “The Margaret Manuscript” was thought to be the alchemical recipes of Lady Margaret Clifford, Countess of Cumberland (1560–1616). Recent scholarship by Bayer,5 however, indicates that the manuscript was actually written in a different hand, probably for use by Clifford but not created by her. As we will see in a future chapter, Clifford traveled in high-level alchemical circles, and through these connections she had access to the books necessary to have “The Margaret Manuscript” compiled. Through these connections she also flirted with the dangerous world of alchemical fraud, but we will leave this part of the story for later.

  Yet while perhaps she did not personally copy the information, the evidence for her role as a practicing alchemist came from the observations of her daughter, who provided us with the quotation at the beginning of this chapter and a portrait. The portrait, painted in 1646, shows Lady Margaret with a copy of psalms in her hand, and behind her, a Bible, a tome of ancient philosophy, and “a written hand Booke of Alkumiste Apstracions of Distillation & Excellent Medicines.”6

  “The Margaret Manuscript,” written in Elizabethan English, presented recipes for fabricating silver and gold, procedures for growing silver trees (à la Paracelsus), and other clever tricks.

  Clever tricks were also the focus of Isabella Cortese, as she presented in her book, I Secreti.

  ISABELLA CORTESE

  The birth and death dates are not known for Isabella Cortese, nor is much about her life. However, the publication of her book of secrets, I Secreti (The Secrets), around 1560, is historic fact.7

  I Secreti was divided into four sections, the second of which dealt with alchemy. The rest offered advice on matters such as dyes, glues, mirrors, cosmetics, and perfumes. With such mundane information coming under the heading “secret,” we have to wonder, once again, what is meant by secret. A “secret” could mean a trade secret, or the best procedure (such as the secret of making a good wine vinaigrette). But perhaps Isabella Cortese had another kind of secret in mind. She advised, “take precautions to insure [sic] the secrecy of your work. If someone asks you about something relating to alchemy, pretend not to know. Don't let anyone into your workshop. Don't ever leave your servant in the workshop alone.” Did she really have a secret worth hiding—or were hints of “secrets” the secret for selling books?

  We'll never know, but a book containing alchemical recipes, written under a woman's name and popular enough to go through several editions, was taken by Bayer as evidence there were women buying the book and that they knew how to apply the informa
tion.

  Cortese was an active alchemical practitioner, but as a purveyor of secrets, she had little use for theory. Eamon described her approach as more trial and error than theoretical.8 In a letter to her brother-in-law, she tells him not to bother reading alchemical literature. All that was needed was a good fire, a good still, and a good servant (which, as we have seen, can be problematic). This mindset fits with the picture of a woman author because theory would have been the tack taken by a university-trained mind, but the Renaissance woman was excluded from a university education. Such was the case with our next alchemical craftswoman, who also made her alchemy a practical pursuit: Anne of Denmark, Electress of Saxony.

  ANNE OF DENMARK, ELECTRESS OF SAXONY

  Anne of Denmark (1532–1585) had a bit of an interesting history outside alchemy.9 At the time, the emperor of the Holy Roman Empire was an elected position, and Anne was married to one of the people who could cast a vote, the Elector of Saxony. This made her the Electress of Saxony, and there were complaints of her excessive input into politics. She gave birth to fifteen children, five of whom survived childhood, and though in a position to command surgeons and servants, she personally saw to the health of her family and preparation of their medicines. She supervised herb gardens, distillations, and the testing of medicines, occupations by no means foreign to both peasant women and laborers, and certainly ones that could have been delegated by the Electress of Saxony. Taking it on as a personal responsibility, she provided plasters and ointments to the poor and the peasants, as well as her most famous recipe: her yellow aqua vitae. The yellow color may have come from an herbal infusion serving as a dilutant, because she wrote that the yellow aqua vitae was not as strong as the white, which, if it was the purest distilled alcohol, would have been quite potent.

  These herbal alcohol infusions may have had healthful as well as inebriating effects. Vitamins are extracted from colorful and aromatic plants and, while some are water soluble, others require an alcohol to dissolve. A mixture of water and alcohol could provide a fine solvent and vitamin supplement in a liquid that had been sterilized by fire. The mode of delivery was stale bread soaked in yellow aqua vitae and sprinkled with sugar, which sounds a bit like rum cake, a well-documented mood elevator. The electress also recommended muscle rubs using her aqua vitae and, in cases of fainting, imbibing the stimulant directly.