The Chemistry of Alchemy Page 15

  Yet, despite the objections—that the mineral medicines were poisonous, associated with mysticism, and the product of the ravings of a wandering self-made medicine man—the antimony laxative worked. It is hard to stop the acceptance of something that works.

  Additionally, a horde of new diseases had descended on western Europe in the Age of Exploration—intermittent plague, syphilis, and novel strains of influenza with their deadly bloody flux—and the only hope on the horizon was Paracelsus. Accordingly, books on Paracelsian cures continued to be printed, and alchemically created medicines continued to be sold. The times they were a-changin’.

  PETER SEVERINUS

  An opening salvo for establishment acceptance came from a newly degreed Denmark doctor of medicine, Peter Severinus (1540–1602). Petrus Severinus started out as Peter Sorensen, a poet, but on receiving a grant from the University of Copenhagen, he began to study abroad with his friend, Johannes Pratensis. After a period of time he took a degree as a doctor of medicine, and, learning that some Paracelsian preparations seemed to have efficacy, he decided to study Paracelsus's writings. After some difficulty, he managed to sort out the meat and marrow of Paracelsian medical philosophy, and in 1571, while still abroad, Severinus wrote his explication of Paracelsus's work, Idea Medecinae Philosophicae, commonly called by its abbreviated title, Idea.

  In Idea, Severinus argued, as did others, that Galen's cures couldn't work against the new diseases because Galen hadn't experienced them. As shown by the Severinus quote with which this chapter opens, Severinus believed it was time to take a fresh look at healing, and he advised a two-pronged approach: study both folk medicine and alchemical-substance cures (again slightly reminiscent of later social movements). Although other digestions of Paracelsus's works had been written, Severinus's version seemed to be the most appreciated. The Danish king, Frederick II, recognized its value and appointed Severinus a physician to the court.

  Severinus followed the Paracelsian party line: medicines indicate the organ they serve by their appearance (doctrine of signatures); adjusting the four humors by bleeding, purging, sweating, and so on does nothing but harm (anti-Galenic approach); and the harmony of nature demands like cures like, the Paracelsian concept of similars. The irony was that neither court had the advantage. Sometimes the Galenic approach worked, and some Paracelsian medicines worked, and there was no real way to refute a claim. Spontaneous remission was not recognized, and in early-European medicine, one “cure” proved the method. If it didn't work a second time, it was God's will. But there was need for a change, so Severinus was praised, and Paracelsian texts rolled off the press.

  But not just reproductions of Paracelsus's writings—which we have shown could make for soporific reading—but rather interpretations, explanations, and reformations of Paracelsus's inspirations. Mineral and metal medicines were touted as miracle cures. Paracelsianism became a battle cry. The new, more malicious diseases required stronger medicines, and larger doses of stronger medicines were recommended. Compounds of mercury, lead, arsenic, and antimony replaced perfectly effective herbal remedies. The message of Paracelsus—calling for diluted drops or, even better, nothing at all—was forgotten in the excitement. Paracelsus became the standard for the medical renaissance, but the standard-bearer would be lost in the charge.

  Soon the question was not whether alchemy should be applied to medicine, but how. Practical alchemists saw the laboratory preparation of medicines as the purpose of Paracelsian medicine while spiritual alchemists thought laboratory work was only part of the preparation, and a minor part at that. The spiritual alchemist believed the purpose of Paracelsus's alchemy was not only to transmute base metals to gold, or sick to well, but also impure to pure in a spiritual sense. Gerard Dorn (1566–1584), who printed a dictionary of Paracelsian terms (probably much appreciated), summarized the perspective when he commanded, “Transform yourselves into living philosophical stones.”3

  Yet, there were other voices that attempted reason. One being that of Andreas Libavius. Born in Saxony, the region that spawned Anna Zieglerin, Libavius must have been nurtured on different waters. Where Zieglerin was imaginative and effusive, Libavius was derivative and constrained. They did, however, share one trait: they were both outspoken.

  ANDREAS LIBAVIUS

  Of humble background, the son of a linen weaver, Andreas Libavius (ca. 1560–1616) nonetheless received his doctor of medicine in Basel, Paracelsus's old stomping grounds. Three years later he became a municipal physician, another path Paracelsus trod. At this point, his lifelong combative rectitude—like Paracelsus—asserted itself. Critical of medicines, theories, and techniques, Libavius had no problem telling others what he thought of their work. He made allies but lost them just as quickly when his critique inevitably turned on them. He wrote to one erstwhile friend: “Your philosophy is nothing but pure dung, sown with nonsense, impostures, the obscurest puzzles and allegories.” Not a soft-spoken man.

  Yet while Paracelsus saw healing as his calling and advised patients his entire life, Libavius had little interest in the practice of medicine. While Paracelsus seemed to embrace all brands of spiritualism and mysticism fairly indiscriminately, Libavius was orthodox Lutheran and was not looking to change. However, Paracelsus and Libavius had a shared interest in one more thing: alchemy. It was a point of fascination for both, as testified by their voluminous writings: Paracelsus's and Libavius's output together would fill a library shelf.

  Figure 10.1. The title page of Libavius's Alchymia, ca. 1600. (Image courtesy of Roy G. Neville Historical Chemical Library, Chemical Heritage Foundation Collections.)

  But while Paracelsus's writings were a meandering collection of speculations, drunken ramblings, and common, public-domain alchemical recipes, Libavius set about compiling all the alchemical knowledge of his time in a clear and organized presentation. His chief work, Alchemia (later Alchymia), was worthy of its description as an early western-European chemistry textbook and included, in addition to procedures, systematic explanations of glassware, vats, devices, furnaces, and a design for the ideal alchemical laboratory.

  While Libavius was convinced of the reality of metallic transformation and the philosophers’ stone, the historian J. R. Partington described his outlook as that “of the university professor rather than that of the practical alchemist or fanatical doctor.”4 Libavius could not accept the doctrine of signatures and did not understand the utility of the Paracelsian approach of treating the weapon, not the wound. He was confounded by the Paracelsian practice of purifying and diluting medicines down to nothing (which, in truth, evaded most Paracelsian disciples), and Libavius could not accept the principle of similars supported by Paracelsus (based on ancient German folk medicine), but he did understand the Galenic principle of contraries.

  It was reasonable, he thought, that nature should seek to restore balance in an unhealthy body by supplying the contrary condition. If nature failed, then the doctor should take steps “to open the closed, correct the distorted, and dry-up the moist.”5 And there were times when it made sense: blocked bowels should be opened, broken legs should be straightened, and water should be given to the dehydrated.

  Nonetheless, Libavius believed the restrictions against alchemical remedies needed to be eased. He recognized the need for continued exploration of new cures, but he also did not hesitate to point out when the fad went too far. Mineral medicines and metals might have some efficacy, but attaching the word Paracelsian to a medicine did nothing. Libavius advised an ordered, methodical, measured approach to Paracelsian medicine—and received vigorous criticism from the growing school of esoteric alchemists.

  For esoteric alchemists, alchemy was more of a spiritual achievement than a physical one. Living in a western Europe still in a superstitious age, this was the turn taken by Libavius's fellow doctor-of-medicine graduate, Heinrich Khunrath. Khunrath and Libavius took their degrees from the same place, Basel, and in the same year, 1588. But like fraternal twins issuing from the same womb
, one grew one way, and the other quite another.

  HEINRICH KHUNRATH

  Paracelsus had said, “These two callings—the promulgation of the word of God and the healing of the sick—must not be separated from each other,”6 and as a spiritual alchemist, Heinrich Khunrath (ca. 1560–1605) heeded the dictum. He developed an approach to medicine he labeled Christianized alchemy and magic. Khunrath rather cleverly mixed in Galenic herbal treatment with his Paracelsian signatures by saying the signature of a substance wasn't just its physical appearance, such as horsetongue, wormwood, and lungwort, but also its smells and taste and what he described as its spiritual qualities. In this way, any medicine that worked could be included in the Paracelsian doctrine of signatures because its signature was the quality of healing the disease. While the medical establishment had been warming up to Paracelsian medicines, they saw Khunrath's spiritualism as a step too far; yet, his Christianized magic received popular acclaim, so esoteric Paracelsianism took the lead.

  Because he tried to separate the spiritual and the magical from alchemy, by the esoteric standard Libavius was not a true alchemist, and they voted him out. At the turn of the sixteenth century, the court of Rudolf II, the Holy Roman emperor (a fascinating fellow of whom we will hear more later), was a mecca for alchemists, astrologers, astronomers, and scholars—but Libavius was not invited. Biographers have speculated that this exclusion colored Libavius's further work because he protested mightily against the shift of alchemy toward the mystic, the otherworldly, the esoteric. For instance, when Oswald Croll (ca. 1580–1609), a physician who served in a political capacity in the court of Rudolf II, wrote his own book wherein he compiled and extolled Paracelsian medicine, especially its inclusion of magic, Libavius attacked. When Croll said Paracelsus had found the elixir of life, Libavius asked why, then, had Paracelsus died before the age of fifty? When Croll offered the standard explanation of the day for unexplained death—poison—Libavius pronounced it a ridiculous fable.7

  Yet, Croll's explanation of poisoning was the one believed.

  Why would Libavius's approach (which seems logical, at least from this distance) meet with such resistance? True, he advocated a return to Galenic humors as a theory of disease—which had shown itself impotent against the new ailments—but he was unconvinced of the Paracelsian remedies, too, so as a conservative stance, he opted for the norm. In a revolutionary atmosphere, a step backward won't receive much acclaim. But there was an added factor in his disfavor. Libavius was writing in Basel, the middle of the Paracelsian stronghold. Since Paracelsus had died, his writings had been discovered by a change-hungry audience, and the publishing industry in Basel recognized a sale when they saw one. There was a rush to discover, edit, write commentaries, translate (this time from the vernacular into Latin), and sell books by Paracelsus, or books about Paracelsus, or digestions, reinterpretations, and rewrites of Paracelsus. The establishment disapproved, but the trend took hold. Soon everyone was calling their methods Paracelsian, even when they prescribed Galenic medicines.

  The argument ended abruptly when the editor of Croll's masterpiece in spiritual Paracelsian medicine was made the “first professor of chemiatry, at the University of Marburg”8 in 1609—while Libavius was passed over for the post. The revolution was over, the spiritual Paracelsians had won, and just how far the wheel had turned is summed up in the following tale of Hans Schult.9

  In the early 1600s, when the worries about witchcraft were waxing strong, a Danish barber-surgeon, Hans Schult, was arrested for practicing black magic. This charge was not trivial. The Danish king at the time, Christian IV, had a fearful country to calm and had already conducted several witch burnings.

  The circumstances, apparently, were that Schult, an elderly gentleman, was looking to bring back the sexual prowess he'd had as a youth. Accordingly, he'd had a fork made at midnight, etched it with the proper symbols before Sunday, and placed it in running water, but he was caught in the act (of placing the fork, that is) and held to account.

  His defense? He was not practicing black magic but Paracelsian medicine. He said that Paracelsus taught that metals and running water contain the power to heal.

  The charges were dropped.

  What had been accomplished by our social revolution? Alchemically prepared medicines would be the way of the future, and through the efforts of the Paracelsians, by the turn of the century, alchemical preparations had become legitimate enough to include in official pharmacopeias. A new approach to medicine had been established and spread throughout western Europe and beyond. New Chemical Medicine Invented by Paracelsus, an Arabic-language book, appeared in the Ottoman Empire before the middle of the seventeenth century. While there was still a long way to go in the ongoing battle against disease, a new front had opened, and progress would be made.

  Curiously, another group benefitted from the acceptance of Paracelsian medicine by the medical and political establishment, and that was the transmutational alchemists. Interest in claims of lead turning to gold had begun to languish, but now with the new legitimacy of medicinal alchemy, interest, and avaricious ears, perked up.

  And as always, waiting in the wings, were those willing to benefit from perked-up ears, and we will meet some in our next chapter.

  But first—to the laboratory of Libavius!

  DEMONSTRATION 10. TRANSMUTATION REVISITED

  Libavius was a reasonable man. Born in simple circumstances, he did not have the inherited arrogance of the privileged, and he had to be an intelligent man to achieve all that he achieved. Yet, as we said, he believed not only that metallic transmutation was a possibility but also that he had personally witnessed the transformation.

  How can it be that a reasonable, intelligent, forward-thinking man at this late date in western-European history still believed in transmutation? Well, for one thing, there wasn't definitive evidence to the contrary, and there were legions of people who agreed with him, some of whom, statistically, had to have been reasonable and intelligent, too. Moreover, this demonstration will allow us to see with our eyes what they saw with their eyes and may make us more sympathetic to their conclusions.

  DISPOSAL

  The solids from the following demonstrations can be disposed of in the trash, and the liquids can be disposed of down the sink, but once again, please follow your sink disposal with lots of cool water.

  IRON-TO-COPPER TRANSMUTATION

  In this demonstration we won't be making gold. For a change, we'll be making copper out of iron. Or so it will seem.

  You will want to wear gloves and protective eye gear, but the materials in this experiment are not terribly corrosive, so old clothes will do nicely.

  For equipment, you will need two small glass beakers or jars and a pair of gardening gloves. For chemical supplies, you will need steel wool, copper(II) sulfate (root killer), distilled water, and (optional) your cast-iron skillet.

  Make a solution of copper(II) sulfate by dissolving one teaspoon (5 milliliters) of copper(II) sulfate (root killer) crystals in about one-third cup (100 milliliters) of distilled water. The copper-sulfate crystals can be slow to dissolve, and if this is your experience, you can warm the solution to just below boiling to help. To do this, first set the beaker in your cast-iron skillet so you don't have copper solution sizzling on your burner.

  Stirring also helps, so warming the solution with stirring is best. If you warm the solution to help the crystals dissolve, let it cool to room temperature before you proceed.

  Once you have your solution of copper(II) sulfate, divide it into two equal portions and put aside one portion for the next demonstration. Put on your garden gloves and tear off a thumb-sized clump of steel wool. You really need to wear the garden gloves because steel wool can deliver a nasty cut. Open wounds and alchemy don't mix.

  Place the clump of steel wool in the copper(II) sulfate solution and watch. The reaction should start in a matter of seconds.

  You should observe a layer of copper forming on the steel wool. You may
want to use a disposable plastic fork to lift the steel wool above the surface momentarily to observe the copper coating more directly.

  The reaction you are witnessing is called a displacement reaction, and it results from the same type of chemistry that created the Tree of Diana in demonstration 8. In this case, the copper, which is a coinage metal like silver, is more resistant to corrosion than iron. Iron corrodes, rusts, very easily, which is why it is not used for the currency of the realm. Therefore, the natural tendency for copper is to form a metal and the natural tendency of iron is to dissolve and go into solution. When put in contact in this manner, they exchange places and the copper plates out on the iron.

  If you have a lot of steel wool in the solution, if you leave the system sitting for a long time, or if you replace the steel wool once a good bit of copper has grown on it, then you will eventually see the blue color of the solution fade, which indicates that the copper in the solution is being used up. It was observations such as this that brought contemporaries of Libavius to come very close to a realistic explanation of the reaction. But for Libavius, it was transmutation, and now that you've seen it for yourself, you can understand why.

  ROYAL BLUE

  Another reaction that Libavius found fascinating also has to do with copper sulfate. For this demonstration you will need a medicine dropper, a beaker, and household ammonia.

  Pour a small amount of ammonia into the beaker. Take the other copper(II) sulfate solution that you saved from the previous demonstration above, and with safety glasses securely in place, raise it to eye level so you can observe the alchemy as it happens.

  Use the medicine dropper to deliver small amounts of ammonia to the copper(II) sulfate solution. You should see local streamers of deep blue that dissipate into solution, but if you continue to add ammonia, the entire solution should eventually turn a uniform dark blue.

  The chemical situation here is that initially the copper reacts with some minor components in the ammonia solution to form a powder-blue compound. Eventually, with continued addition of ammonia, the ammonia molecules surround and displace the water molecules that were surrounding the copper ions in solution. The interaction of light with this new complex ion, as it is called, is such that the solution appears royal blue.