The Chemistry of Alchemy Read online

  Even these measures, however, are not enough for all demonstrations. For some demonstrations, we will direct you outdoors. For these setups, you will need an outdoor heat source, which cannot be electrical. We recommend a hibachi with an adjustable grill (such as we describe in “Stores and Ores”), and we ask you to read all safety literature accompanying this item. Use the recommended fuel and wait until any starter fluid is completely burned away and the charcoal has settled to a pleasant, warm glow. Never set anything directly on the charcoal, but do use a grill and the cast-iron skillet we recommend in “Stores and Ores” as a surface for beakers and flasks. The skillet serves as a catch pan to keep chemicals off the coals and provides more-even heating.

  Or, if you know a friendly chemist (or if you are a friendly chemist), these outdoor demonstrations can be done in a chemical exhaust hood with standard laboratory safety precautions.

  You are going to need a heat-resistant surface for receiving hot items, and a stovetop usually works well if you are in the kitchen. But if you are working in a workshop or in the bathroom, you don't want to be guessing if your surface is heat resistant or not—and guess wrong—so use the bottom of an inverted pan for your heat-resistant surface. In any situation, turn pot handles to the side, and so on, and follow all the usual safety rules for cooking.

  Indoors or out, make certain a fire extinguisher is nearby and filled. (You're going to be careful and won't need a fire extinguisher, but, what the heck, it's good to know where one is anyway.)

  Seriously.

  Get one.

  Keep all demonstration materials away from pets and children. Chemicals can be handled safely, but children and dogs don't do this well. These demonstrations are not for children.

  Read the instructions for your heat source. We know this is boring, but the excitement of the emergency room isn't worth it. Don't heat glass containers, use Pyrex, and never put an empty container on a hot burner—even Pyrex—because it might crack without a liquid to absorb and distribute the heat. In “Stores and Ores,” we recommend genuine laboratory glassware, which is not as expensive as it sounds, takes the guesswork out of safety, and looks cool.

  Please don't assume everything can go down the sink or down the toilet for safe, environmentally conscientious disposal. Disposal instructions are included with every demonstration. It is always a good practice to read through a procedure before beginning, and this may be one more motivation: you'll need to know what to do with the chemicals after you're done.

  If the disposal instructions say the chemical can be flushed down the sink, always follow with two to three minutes of a cool water rinse. Never dispose of chemicals down a drain that has a garbage disposal.

  Speaking of chemicals, bear in mind these are fairly pure, concentrated materials, and people have sensitivities to all types of allergens, sulfur being a notable player. If you find yourself itching, swelling, having trouble breathing, or getting a headache, stop, cut power to all heat sources, and seek medical attention.

  One last guideline: if you accidentally ingest some of the chemicals and don't have the number for your local poison-control center right there in front of you, call 911.

  Don't worry. They've heard everything.

  SAFETY RULES

  Rule one—hard and fast—always wear safety glasses, which you can buy at any hardware store. You want them to be as big and geeky looking as possible. Side shields are a must. Even if you think you don't need them, wear them. Wet things splash and dry things pop. Current medical science has no way to replace a broken eye. Once it's gone, it's gone.

  The second rule has to do with the first: don't lean directly over a reaction to see what's going on. There are two reasons: First, you will block the airflow and defeat the purpose of the exhaust fan. Second, you don't want your face in the way when things decide to take off. If you want to peer into the pot (for which we can't blame you), use the handheld mirror we suggested for purchase in “Stores and Ores.”

  The third rule is to treat all chemicals like liquid bleach. You don't sniff liquid bleach, you don't breathe liquid bleach, you don't taste liquid bleach, and you keep liquid bleach off your body and your clothing. You clean up spills and splashes on your person with lots and lots of water. Get surgical gloves at the drugstore and wear them. Wear old clothes, an apron, or a lab coat (go full-out nerd), but please note the fourth rule:

  No creative alchemy! Don't try combinations that aren't in the book just to see what happens…because something might happen.

  And, finally, if at any time you do not feel comfortable performing a demonstration, don't do it. Or find someone who has chemical experience to help.

  In this book we invite you: be the alchemist!

  But, please, be safe.

  The serpent Ourobouros, symbol of the eternal cycle of change: summer, winter; life, death; transmutation. (Image courtesy of the California State University, Los Angeles, John F. Kennedy Memorial Library, Special Collections.)

  Our purpose is to explore the lives and works of the western-European alchemists: those who believed in the possibility of metallic transmutation, believed transmutation had been achieved in the past, and searched for the secret of transmutation in the writings of ancient authors. On the surface, this goal seems straightforward, but to actually understand the alchemist (or at least convince yourself you understand the alchemist), you have to delve into their mindset, which is not so simple. The intellectual approach of alchemists was quite different from modern thinkers.

  To begin with, due to influences we will investigate in part 2, the western-European alchemists based their ideas on the conclusions of ancient sages rather than on the evidence seen by their own eyes. Therefore, before we plunge into the heart of our matter, we must take time to consider who the ancient sages were and why their opinions would influence alchemical work for the next fifteen hundred years.

  Nonetheless, we won't tarry long. Detailed treatments can be found in several books in our bibliography, so here we will choose instead representatives: Zosimos of Panopolis and Jābir ibn Hayyān, soon to be known in western Europe as Geber, King of the Arabs.1

  Do not regard him as a man of copper; for he has changed…and become a man of silver…after a little time you will have him as a man of gold.

  Zosimos of Panopolis, pre-alchemist, ca. 300 CE*

  We don't begin our story of western-European alchemy in western Europe; we begin in Africa. Ancient Alexandria, to be exact, where warm, Mediterranean waters washed white, sparkling beaches under blue, balmy skies. Alexandria might have been an Eden, but there are no Edens, and Alexandria had its issues, too. One was lack of fresh water,1 and another was sand: an omnipresent grit that covered all, invaded all, and, as mummies show, insidiously wore down teeth—down to the bloody pulp.2

  To deal with their need for water and difficulties with teeth, the early Egyptians quickly learned two things about fire: it separates and it fuses. They used fire's heat to fuse water to grain to make gruels, and they used fire's heat to separate fresh water from the salty waters of the Mediterranean. The pre-Alexander Africans made other discoveries with fire, as well. They found certain rocks, when heated with fire, would fuse with a copper nugget, and the result was something shiny and new: something that looked a lot like gold. The Pharaohs seemed to have a fondness for gold, so, being a pragmatic people, some Egyptians turned from the art of making gruel to the art of making gold. Eventually their recipes would be written down. But first…

  Enter Alexander.

  ALEXANDRIAN EGYPT

  Alexander the Great conquered this area of Africa in his grand sweep around the Mediterranean, and he founded a city, naming it “Alexandria,” after himself. Then he left. The Greek overlords he put in charge couldn't be accused of treating native Egyptians as second-class citizens because they didn't allow them to be citizens at all. The Egyptians, relegated to lives of less privilege, formed the labor force, lived in separate quarters from the ruling Greek and Hellenized
population, and were buried in separate burial grounds.3 The situation did not always result in overt hostilities because of efforts toward conviviality by Greeks and Egyptians alike. The rulers chose their gods to be blended from Greek and Egyptian, and the two populations learned each other's languages. Still, the divide existed, and artisans who tended the fires in the metalworking shops were most likely Egyptian, and with them our story begins.

  We have no personal histories of any individual artisan, but examples of recipes from workshops survive on leaves of papyrus called the Stockholm and Leyden papyri. The documents were written in Greek (but this does not preclude authorship by an Egyptian), and on these papyri our artisan wrote recipes for falsifying gold.4

  At the onset we must clearly state the Egyptian metalworkers did not believe they were making real gold, and they didn't intend subterfuge. Though the author of the papyri declared one product “is of the first quality, which will deceive even the artisans,”5 the statement was probably advertising, as one might promote a wig by claiming it looked like real hair. If the purpose was nefarious, it is doubtful they would record their methods so carelessly, let alone include on the same papyrus tests to determine if a gold or silver sample is real or false.6 There are no attempts to keep the recipe secret, though there is an injunction to keep the secret for making a purple dye, so one assumes the dye was more precious than falsified gold.

  The people who purchased the fake items were probably also aware of the difference but didn't mind dressing up their lives with “gold” and not paying the price for the real thing.7 There were numerous recipes in the papyri for gilding the surface of base metals (gold plating in today's parlance) or for simply dyeing the surface a golden color. There were recipes for “gold doubling,” in which gold was mixed with other materials and metals to extend the amount, which is still done today with alloys of gold, the purity of which is measured in karats. They must have been passing fair at their skills because in the year 290 CE, around the time the papyri were written,8 the Roman emperor Diocletian, concerned with counterfeit coinage, decreed all books and manuscripts dealing with the making of gold to be destroyed. Fortunately these two survived.

  In the demonstration accompanying this chapter, we are going to make a bit of false gold, à la Alexandrian artisan, and you will probably wonder why the emperor was worried. The color is certainly gold-like, but for anyone who has handled actual gold, there is little doubt of the lack of authenticity. So how did this phony, costume gold turn into the passionate pursuit of real gold making? Enter Zosimos.

  ZOSIMOS OF PANOPOLIS

  The Alexandrian philosopher Zosimos had a foot in each world. Despite his Greek-sounding name, Zosimos was not born in Greece but Panopolis, which is seven hundred kilometers (about four hundred miles) south and inland from Alexandria, on the Nile. According to J. R. Partington,9 venerable historian of chemistry, Greeks and Egyptians intermarried and some Egyptians took Greek names; therefore, Zosimos may have been Greek or Egyptian or both, but, in any case, he certainly had Greek aspirations.

  The years of Zosimos's life (ca. 300 CE) were relatively peaceful, so he was able to travel to many parts of Egypt10 and to Athens, Greece.11 We do not know the source of his financial support—he may have had family money, or he may have been a wandering teacher like Greek philosophers before him—but we do know he wrote prolifically,12 and prolific writing suggests teaching: the wandering philosophers/teachers mostly relied on tutoring fees to earn a living, and writing offered philosophers a way to augment their income and advertise their teaching skills.

  Like the earlier Greek philosophers, Zosimos's writings show an observational interest in the physical world,13 but he added his own Egyptian angle: he was fascinated by the Egyptian artisan's skills and with the art of gold making in particular.

  Zosimos and other pre-alchemists probably understood that false gold wasn't really gold—but they thought it was close, and they wanted to get closer. We know from his writings Zosimos made an effort to familiarize himself with techniques for treating and dyeing metals to resemble gold; however, it is not clear if he gathered this information as a welcome guest at the artisan's workshop. Perhaps he didn't need to. He may have learned of their techniques and equipment through an intermediary, another person with a foot in both worlds, a woman and a Jew, Mary the Jew.

  MARY THE JEW

  Whether Mary ever existed as anything other than Zosimos's literary device may never be known. No writings can be unambiguously identified as hers, though Zosimos quoted and spoke of her as an ancient, which may have meant a predecessor, but he may have been speaking metaphorically and she may have been an older contemporary. At any rate, the possibility of her existence is not farfetched. In addition to the Greeks and the Egyptians, a third social stratum resided in Alexandria, the Jews. A substantial population, the Jews, like the Egyptians, were denied citizenship and occupied a separate community, but they had more access to privilege than the natives.

  Zosimos refers to Mary as the “Transmitter of the Art,”14 and from Zosimos's writings, we gather she introduced him, personally or through her works, to apparatuses used in alchemical practices such as calcination, volatilization, and distillation, as we will address in the demonstrations that accompany this chapter and the next. She probably told him about her device for gentle heating by a water bath, which is now called a bain-marie in France, a bagno maria in Italian, and in English cookery, it is simply a double boiler. She may have also introduced him to a device called a kerotakis, which was used for heating a mineral and exposing a metal to its vapor.15 This treatment could have given a base metal a silvery or golden color—and it could have given Zosimos ideas on the future direction of Alexandrian gold making: If the artisans are this good at making false gold, he reasoned, why not let the philosophers take it further? If you can dye the surface, then why not permeate the cloth? Why not make gold?

  Mary, however, spoke from a background of practicality: “Can you produce gold but from gold, or can you form a metal from a non-metal? Can you produce a man save from a man; a plant except from a plant and an animal but from its own kind?”16

  But Zosimos was not deterred. In the kerotakis, he decided, the spirit of the mineral was being separated from the body by the action of fire and then united with the metal to make a new metal. Thus, he reasoned, gold making was merely a matter of finding the right spirit, separated from the right mineral, to combine with the body of the right metal, and voilà, gold.

  Zosimos didn't waste time wondering why the artisans hadn't done it, if it was this easy. He assumed with Aristotelian rectitude, “only a philosopher, who has acquired Wisdom, scientifically and practically, is able to use it. An experimentalist may obey his master.”17 In short, the artisans didn't have the gray matter to figure it out. He must not have thought much of Mary's cognitive powers, either, because he was comfortable critiquing her work, saying “never disobey any of the rules, otherwise you will not succeed in your preparation and all your efforts will be wasted.”18

  Figure 1.1. A bain-marie, circa 1500. Named for the Alexandrian alchemist Mary the Jew. (Image courtesy of Roy G. Neville Historical Chemical Library, Chemical Heritage Foundation Collections.)

  But the efforts to make true gold were, of course, wasted, yet Zosimos was not dissuaded. In his mind's eye he could see how it should work, how it must work, and he wrote about it metaphorically, yet so convincingly, that some who followed believed the fantasy, “If you wish, after a little time you will have…gold.”19

  Enter alchemy.

  THE ZOSIMOS EFFECT

  But we can't call it alchemy yet. Alchemy is an Arabic word (note the Arabic prefix al) and wouldn't be used in the English language until nearly a millennium later.20 Nonetheless, Zosimos's writings already displayed three of the cornerstones of what would become western-European alchemical tradition:21 (1) the idea that materials, including metals, could be separated into primary parts; (2) these primary parts could be recombined into new
materials, including gold; and (3) that the secret for doing so must be kept from the unworthies—which in Zosimos's case were the Egyptian artisans. The fourth cornerstone was provided by Zosimos himself and others like him: it was the unshakable belief that someone in the past had discovered the secret to making gold and all that remained was to find it.

  Who said so? Zosimos said so.

  But how did he become so convinced? If the artisans knew they weren't making gold, and Mary said you couldn't make gold, why did Zosimos think he could make gold?

  There may be several reasons. Maybe Zosimos decided the artisans were producing real gold, and they just didn't know it. Water from the cistern might be brown and Mediterranean water salty, but they were both considered water. Likewise, impure gold can vary somewhat in color and properties and still be gold.22 Even if it was only crude gold, certainly some way could be found to improve it. Maybe it just had to ripen…If the artisans didn't recognize the enormity of their discovery, well, that was because they were artisans, not philosophers.

  Or perhaps Zosimos saw stronger evidence. Mercury metal is a liquid at room temperature and forms instantaneous alloys, called amalgams, with many metals, including gold. So it's possible to evaporate impure mercury and find in its wake, yes, gold.23 If Zosimos witnessed such an event, it would explain the fascination he had with evaporation and distillation and affirm his belief in the possibility of making gold.

  On the other hand, Zosimos's faith in his own thought processes may have convinced him he knew how to make gold. He may have based his absolute conviction on what he believed to be an obvious truth. If so, he couldn't have been the first, and he wouldn't be the last.

  Add to this certitude the likelihood that Zosimos was a teacher (in the tradition of Aristotle, hired tutor of no less than Alexander the Great). It would be a rare teacher who received commissions after admitting ignorance. Therefore Zosimos no doubt stated his knowledge, perceived or real, with the same surety of teachers today.