The Chemistry of Alchemy Read online

  After winning the confidence of influential people, Caetano managed to be presented to Elector Maximilian Emmanuel as an alchemical adept. When he failed to produce gold, the elector became impatient, and Caetano decided an exit was in order. He escaped—for a while—but was brought back and this time kept in jail while he continued his efforts under the watchful eye of the elector. Six years later he managed to escape again.

  After these experiences, most people would look for a new line of work, but not Caetano.

  He changed his name to Count de Ruggiero and started making friends again. He obtained an audience with Emperor Leopold, Holy Roman emperor from 1640–1705, and talked him into a substantial grant to make gold. The emperor died, and Caetano talked the widow out of more money and another letter of recommendation, this time to the elector of the Palatinate. At this point, we truly wish someone would have taken notes on Caetano's conversations. If these rulers could donate so much money to Caetano, why did they need him to make gold? They must have been keeping him around for entertainment.

  There were others who found him entertaining, too, for instance, the daughter of a local midwife. He spent time with her instead of making the elector's gold and soon found himself needing to make another exit.

  Remarkably, he cropped up a year later in Berlin with plenty of money and back to the name Caetano. This time he talked King Frederick of Prussia into setting him up with work space—but with another, trusted, alchemist looking over his shoulder—and Caetano pulled it off. Using a red-colored powder of projection, Caetano managed to convince the other alchemist and then a room full of people, including the king and a goldsmith, that he could make gold.

  We would love to take a look at his recipe. In all likelihood, if it was that good, the main ingredient of his recipe to make gold was probably gold, which is why he couldn't do the demonstration too often and still realize a profit and also why he had an exit strategy planned. Caetano gave a small sample of his powder of projection to the king in a vial and promised to deliver more. He made a great show of being hard at work, but right before the due date, he slipped out of town.

  Thereupon ensued a chase with more dodges and twists than angels evading imps. He got caught but talked his way out of it. He got caught again but slipped past his guard. (It's not good to think what happened to the guard.) Finally Caetano overplayed his hand, his captors stuffed cotton in their ears, and he was condemned and hanged on August 29, 1709. Legend has it that the gallows was gilded and that his body was displayed in a golden cloak.

  Thus ends our survey of alchemical charlatans, scoundrels, and skryers. People of obvious intelligence and talent, all wasted in nefarious pursuits. What a shame! So many other things they could have done with alchemy!

  As we will learn next chapter.

  But first, dim the lights and prepare to be swindled. To the charlatan's lair!

  DEMONSTRATION 11. TRICKS OF THE TRADE

  DISPOSAL

  All solid materials from this demonstration can be disposed of in the trash. The sodium hydroxide solution could be disposed of down the sink because it is, after all, lye, and lye was once used as drain cleaner. Nonetheless, we advise that you neutralize and dilute this solution simultaneously by adding small amounts of vinegar (a tablespoon, which is 15 milliliters, at a time), with stirring. The total amount of vinegar you add should be the same as the amount of solution you started with, about 50 milliliters, so your beaker will be at the 100-milliliter mark when you are done. Before you do this, however, save a small amount of the hydroxide solution in a labeled sample bottle for use in demonstration 20, our last demonstration.

  The vinegar-diluted hydroxide solution can be eased down the drain, followed by copious amounts of cool water, of course.

  ERINA'S GORGEOUS GOLDEN COIN

  We have named this demonstration “Erina's Gorgeous Golden Coin” because Erina was the one who made it work, but it is based on the recipe given up by Krohnemann at his trial (and a more modern version given by Kevin Hufford15). The original is quoted as follows:

  Mercury, verdigris, vitriol, and salt are to be digested with strong vinegar in an iron pot and stirred with an iron rod until the mass takes on the consistency of butter. The remaining liquid, which is an amalgam of copper, is then to be pressed through leather and put into a crucible with even parts of curcuma and tutia, whereupon the crucible is to be heated by a blast. The curcuma reduces the tutia, and the copper in the amalgam unites with the zinc to form brass.16

  Using modern chemical terms, this would read as follows:

  Mercury, copper(II) acetate, copper(II) sulfate, and salt are heated with acetic acid in an iron pot until all the copper has been reduced to metal by the iron. The mercury/copper amalgam is removed from the leftover liquid. Zinc oxide and the spice curcuma are added. The zinc is reduced to metal, which forms a silvery surface on the copper. When heated, the zinc unites with the copper to form a golden alloy.

  An amusing aspect to this recipe is that the mercury, salt, and spice are, we believe, totally unnecessary. They are gratuitous ingredients. Then why are they included?

  Perhaps, as we mentioned before, the mercury was added because, long ago, it had been decided that mercury was a part of all metals, and therefore mercury was needed to make gold. Paracelsus had added salt as a necessary principle, so that would explain the presence of salt, too. But why the spice? Maybe it was expensive or hard to get, which would make it unlikely the casual alchemist would try the recipe and cry fraud.

  At any rate, we removed the salt, curcuma, and mercury from the recipe. Maybe not as spicy, but it still works.

  Gather together a 100-milliliter beaker; about a teaspoon (3 milliliters) of zinc metal; Teflon or plastic tweezers, tongs, or chopsticks; and some pennies, salt, and vinegar. We will be making a hydroxide solution from the sodium hydroxide granules suggested for purchase in “Stores and Ores.”

  Put on your safety glasses. Take about one-half to three-quarters teaspoon of sodium hydroxide granules and place them in about 100 milliliters of water. Do not make your solution stronger than this. The sodium hydroxide is a lye solution, which is drain cleaner. Treat it as least as carefully as you would drain cleaner. Wear surgical gloves and protective clothing. If you accidentally get some sodium hydroxide on your skin, rinse it off with water and keep rinsing even after you are sure it is all gone. No other first aid should be necessary, but if your skin has a burning sensation, rinse it some more.

  You won't get any in your eyes because you have your safety glasses on, but if someone else gets sodium hydroxide in their eyes, rinse the face and eyes with copious amounts of water, gently raising the eyelid if necessary to get water directly on the corner of the eye so it flows over the eye. After a thorough rinsing (five to ten minutes with eyes open), seek medical attention.

  Safety glasses on? We are ready to proceed.

  Add approximately 50 milliliters of sodium hydroxide solution to a 100-milliliter beaker (you can use the markings on your beaker to measure) and put the beaker in your cast-iron skillet on a burner. Set the heat for 50 percent power and allow the solution to warm. You do not want the solution to be at a hard, full boil, but it needs to be bubbling or simmering.

  While your solution is warming, find a US copper penny and clean it with a vinegar/salt solution as we described in demonstration 1. Rinse it with water.

  Add your chunks of zinc to the warm sodium hydroxide solution and wait a few minutes.

  Place the penny into the solution using your plastic tweezers, tongs, or chopsticks. Make certain the penny is in good contact the zinc.

  The penny should start gaining a silvery coating after thirty minutes. Wait until the coin is silvery all over, and then remove it with your plastic utensil while carefully catching any drips on a napkin or a paper towel. Rinse the penny under water and toss the paper towel. Turn off your burner and allow the solution to cool (you may want to do another penny later).

  Take a picture of the penny. It'
s pretty.

  Now remove the beaker from the skillet (use oven mitts if it is still hot). Put the beaker on a heat-resistant surface.

  Put the skillet back on the burner and turn the burner on again, but this time crank it up to 70 percent power. When the skillet is nice and hot, lay your silvery penny in the skillet and watch while it turns a golden color. It is really quite pleasing! Use your tongs to take the penny off the heat as soon as it is golden and set it aside to cool on a heat-resistant surface. Turn off the burner.

  When you are all done, you can rinse your leftover zinc, if there is any, and keep it for other experiments or put it in the trash. You can neutralize your sodium hydroxide solution as described in the disposal instructions and pour it down the drain as long as you run lots of cold water behind it. Leave the faucet running for two to three minutes.

  While you're waiting, take a picture of the golden penny, too.

  TRANSMUTING BACK AND FORTH

  Locate the penny you saved from demonstration 4, the one that was dipped in sulfur water and acquired a black coating as a result. Make a nice strong solution of vinegar and salt and warm it on a fairly high setting so it is gently boiling. Wait until the solution has warmed and then hold your penny with plastic tongs, tweezers, or chopsticks and dip it in the vinegar/salt solution. The black coating should come right off and the “iron” will be turned back to copper.

  Impressive? That's what the charlatans were hoping.

  TO MAKE GOLD, ONE MUST START WITH GOLD

  But of course neither of the above transmutations would hold up to close examination. There are some properties of gold, silver, and copper that are hard to fake, such as density, softness, and true color; therefore, our samples so far would not pass the goldsmith's test. But stories keep surfacing of alchemical gold that passed all the tests. So how did the charlatans do it? Well, as the optimistic alchemist Bernard Trivisan would say with his dying breath: “To make gold, one must start with gold.”17

  There are a couple of ways the charlatans managed this, such as dipping gold into black ink and then washing off the ink to have it “turn gold” or hiding gold in a hollow tube, plugging the end with wax, and then stirring a hot liquid with the tube until the wax melts and the gold is released. We tried both these methods, and they worked well enough with practice. So when an emissary from Queen Elizabeth described a transmutation by Edward Kelly, saying, “I do assure your grace, that…I am an eye witness thereof; and if I had not seen it, I should not have believed it, I saw Master Kelley put of the base metal in a crucible; and after it was set a little upon the fire, a very small quantity of medicine put in, and stirred with a stick of wood, it came forth in great projection, perfect gold; to the touch, to the hammer, to the test,”18 Queen Elizabeth may have wondered: What was in that medicine? But we have to wonder: What was in that stick?

  Another way to perform a transmutation that yielded true gold might be with a crucible with a false bottom. We managed to make such a crucible, after a fashion, as follows.

  We put real gold in the form of gold jewelry at the bottom of a crucible. The jewelry had to be solid 22 karat or better, otherwise, when we heated the crucible, the heat caused the adulterants in the alloy to tarnish and ruin the look of the gold. The alchemist, of course, would have used a flat, puddle-looking wad of gold in the bottom—it's one thing to magically make gold but quite another to make it in the form of jewelry!

  We made certain our beaker fit comfortably in the crucible, on top of the gold, and then we melted some tin in the beaker so that the bottom was covered with a film of tin. We let the tin cool and then put the beaker in the crucible, over the gold, so the gold was no longer visible.

  Again, this was our setup: a crucible with gold at the bottom and a “false bottom” beaker made of Pyrex covered with tin on top of the gold.

  Then we put the false-bottomed crucible in our cast iron skillet and turned the heat to 60 percent power. We waited until our tin melted (we could have waited for the peacock's tail, but we didn't), then we tossed on a tiny bit of sal ammoniac (ammonium chloride), our powder of projection. The tin beaded up, revealing the gold beneath.

  We didn't fool anyone, but we had some laughs.

  By now you're probably asking yourself this: But wait, wasn't the powder of projection supposed to be red? Yes, that was usually how the story went, so we fixed things like this: we mixed in some rust with the sal ammoniac to change the color. The alchemists probably used realgar, a bright-red mineral form of arsenic, but arsenic is on our list of prohibited materials, so we made due with rust. We found the rust didn't interfere with the action of the sal ammoniac as a powder of projection, and, in fact, we could see why someone would want to add a colorant. The rust color dominates the powder's appearance and would be the color a witness would remember. As such, it disguises the true nature of the powder of projection, which for us was a white, crystalline salt.

  The red color would be a red herring for anyone trying to guess the secret.

  Of course we have no idea if this is what the charlatans did, but it is one way they could have done it, and at a temperature of a fireplace fire where people could comfortably watch.

  Clever? Yes. In addition, the charlatans couldn't go to the pharmacist to pick up more supplies without tipping their hand, so they had to be able to make their reagents, such as sal ammoniac, and purify their ingredients, such as tin. They had to be able to make a fire with just the right heat and know what not to do as well as what to do. Therefore this exercise brought home to us, once more, what skilled alchemists these charlatans must have been.

  But one did not need to be a charlatan to be a good alchemist. There were also legitimate, respectable ways to make gold with alchemy, as we will see in the coming chapter when we journey to the ivy-covered walls of Alchemy U.

  Every Alchymist is a Physician or a Sope-boyler.

  Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, ca. 1500*

  Alchemy is an art, and as every artist knows, you have to have a day job. Many alchemists were workaday people who still had to earn a living when making gold didn't pan out. Fortunately alchemy is a skill set, and just as Renaissance engineers learned about gears, wheels, levers, and pulleys when trying to make perpetual-motion machines, alchemists attempting to make gold learned how to distill, precipitate, sublimate, and separate, and they fell back on these talents when the patrons’ patience ran thin. Artisan during the day and alchemist at night.

  We've already met alchemists who supplemented their incomes making aqua vitae and pigments. Some alchemists made “medicines,” mineral concoctions that might have had accidental benefits but usually did nothing—or did harm. Even others evolved skills in metallurgy, perfumery, glazing, and exotic (sometimes deadly!) herbal extractions, so we can add these to the list of things alchemists could do with alchemy.

  Alchemy, and a little bit of luck.

  METALLURGY, MINING, AND MEDINA

  Mining and metallurgy were naturals for the alchemists’ skills and reminders of their reasons for secrecy, too. Take, for instance, the story of an adventurer named Bartholomew Medina (fl. 1550) who is said to have learned a German alchemist's secret of extracting silver from depleted ore. The German alchemist, Lorenzo, told Medina that pulverized ore could be washed with mercury, which would amalgamate with any silver in the ore, and then the mercury could be evaporated to leave behind clean silver. In an exhausted silver mine near Mexico City, Medina gave it a try, but no luck. At this point, accounts of the story diverge, but in our favorite version he tried different mercury additives until he found that another old alchemists’ standby, magistral, copper(II) sulfate, catalyzed the reaction. He obtained a patent for the process from the viceroy of New Spain and probably died a rich man.

  Figure 12.1. Alchemist's workshop ca. 1650. (Image used by permission of Edgar Fahs Smith History of Chemistry Collection. Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania.)

  If the question has ever come up as to why all the obfus
cation in alchemy, think of what happened to the German Lorenzo. Bartholomew Medina got silver; no one even knows the German's full name.1

  AROMA AND RENÉ

  The art of distillation was a handy alchemical skill, which included knowing the right temperature and how to keep it there, the proper length and cooling for the take-off tube, and how to apply luting (clay sealant) to keep the product from going up in steam.

  A good candidate for distillation was always wine, but there were other products in demand, too, one of which was perfume. In the demonstration that accompanies this chapter, we will experiment with a couple of different setups to show the skills that might be needed by a master perfumer, such as Maître René, Florentine alchemist and perfume maker to Caterina de Medici, Queen of France.

  The members of the Medici family of Florence were longtime patrons and practitioners of alchemy. In fact there is a standard piece of glassware found in chemistry labs, the Florence flask, so named for the Renaissance city-state of Florence in Italy. Caterina de Medici took the Florentine family tradition with her when, at the age of fourteen, she married the future king of France.

  By any account, Caterina de Medici had a hard life. A homely child bride, rejected by her husband for his mistress and unexpectedly thrust into the role of queen, she ultimately had ten children and outlived all but two. Nonetheless, before her first conception, she had to battle infertility and did so with the treatments of the day: potions and plasters of animal excrement.

  It is no wonder she sought a few comforts in life, one of which came from her perfumer, Maître René. She indulged herself in the lovely aromas he created.

  Caterina's difficulties mounted when her husband was stabbed through the eye in a jousting incident and died. Now queen mother to an underage child king, she found herself dealing with dynastic rivals, rebellious subjects, and foreign threats. Stoic to the last, she guided the ship of state through the deaths of two sons and finally delivered it into the hands of a third before she went to her rest. Managing this feat required all the ploys of politics: diplomacy, aggression, subterfuge—and poison.