The Chemistry of Alchemy Read online

  However our old friend Libavius (from chapter 10, “Paracelsian Men”) was having none of it. He fired off two pamphlets against the Rosicrucians in 1616. Interestingly, he didn't actually cry foul: he didn't say that the Rosicrucians didn't exist. Instead he denounced the obfuscation and mysticism in the original tracts announcing the emergence of the society. He also railed against the secrecy and exclusive nature of the order, but then he might have still been smarting from his exclusion from Rudolf II's court.

  Yet for whatever reason, common sense, indignation, or hurt feelings, Libavius's denouncement caught the eye of Robert Fludd. Now in his forties, Fludd was moved to one more rash, arrogant act: he wrote a tract in defense of the Rosicrucians. Andreae had rather cruelly written that his made-up Rosicrucians invited attempts at contact and would respond to those they deemed worthy, and Fludd certainly believed himself worthy. When he received no response from the Rosicrucians in appreciation for his support—and no response to his many publicized attempts to contact them, he was, finally, embarrassed. Later he downplayed his enthusiasm for the Rosicrucians as “a certaine silly and poore Apology of mine,”8 and though he was always characterized as “a somewhat difficult man and an eccentric,”9 he seemed to get a bit worse.

  His tract in defense of the Rosicrucians had been his first publication, but Fludd grew prolific from that point on. He wrote virulent attacks on Aristotle, Galen, and other pagans and criticized the universities for promoting study of the ancients. He insisted the Scriptures were as reliable as, if not better than, the information of the senses, and the Bible and Christian interpretations of it were sufficient for all understanding of nature.10 From his readings of Genesis, he identified the primary elements as darkness, light, and water, which meant the four elements of Aristotle and the three principles of Paracelsus were secondary at best.

  Then again, Fludd was in agreement with other alchemists on the matter of air. He recognized that life depended on the presence of a certain effluence in the air, that is, an “aerial saltpeter.”11 Furthermore, Fludd understood that air was material because he was able to trap bubbles by placing an inverted glass in water, and these bubbles resisted compression, which meant something was there, though invisible. Fludd also performed Van Helmont's experiment of burning a candle under a glass in a water bowl (see demonstration 15) and concluded that the air fed the fire, and the fire consumed a part of the air. Had he pursued this line of inquiry, had he focused on the logical extension of these observations…

  Figure 17.1. Michael Maier. (Image used by permission of Edgar Fahs Smith History of Chemistry Collection. Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania.)

  But he did not.

  The reason? He might have been distracted by his own desire to reclaim external approbation and to validate his mystical worldview.

  For the last years of his life, in a stab at respectable work, Fludd devoted himself to isolating the quintessence of wheat.

  This process was laboriously performed by extraction, distillation, calcination, and fermentation. At one point he characterizes the concoction as a “shapeless muddy and slimy dark mass of disagreeable smell,” but he presses on. At another point, his rotting extract developed a colony of “wormes of a strange shape,…very long slender and passing white”—an event which Fludd celebrated. It meant he was on the right track. He was going for the quintessence, “the true agent of life” and the “vitall nature”12 of wheat, and with the worms, he had generated life. The first twitch of Frankenstein's finger.

  When Fludd was done, or at least when he decided to stop, he had a red oil. He judged it to look like human blood, therefore the blood of the plant, his longed-for quintessence. He used the oil on himself and claimed it possessed extraordinary medicinal powers.

  So did mysticism get in the way of Robert Fludd? We believe it did. But before we lay a blanket condemnation on mysticism in science, we would like to look at another seventeenth-century organization, this time a real—not make-believe—one, the Jesuits. Were they mystics? Most decidedly. Their organization was founded on the principle of God being the source of understanding. Robert Fludd regarded the Jesuits as men “who for their profundite in Philosophy [have] been especially respected [over] all Europe.”13

  Yet theirs was a different type of mysticism. Robert Fludd respected their mysticism; but they didn't respect his.

  ATHANASIUS KIRCHER

  Athanasius Kircher (ca. 1601–1680) was a Jesuit, a brother in the Society of Jesus, an organization still active today and lauded for its excellence in teaching institutions, hospitals, libraries, and philanthropic works. So the question arises: What do Jesuits have to do with alchemy?

  Maybe not so much now, but in the seventeenth century, there was a connection.

  The involvement of Jesuits in alchemy was presaged by Martin del Rio (1551–1608), a Jesuit who had taught Van Helmont. Del Rio studied the basis for witchcraft and other occult practices, but he did not include alchemy with the occult. He said alchemy could create useful products, and alchemical gold was not as good as real gold but acceptable for some uses.

  However, Del Rio believed people could get involved with the devil in their obsession to make gold and end up not able to take care of their families, thus forcing their wives and daughters into prostitution. That was a problem. Alchemy was a safe pursuit only for the pious, educated, and rich (so as not to endanger their wives and children). Jesuits fit the bill. They were Jesuit and therefore pious, they were educators and therefore educated. They were not rich, but they eschewed wealth, and they had no wives or children to endanger.

  Since their founding in1534, the Jesuits took on teaching as a fundamental component of their proselytizing mission.14 The Jesuit schools became centers of quality secondary and university learning—for both students and teachers. The directors of the schools presented a standard and exacting Aristotelian curriculum, which did not include alchemy, but they recognized the need of their scholars to study and therefore allowed their faculty considerable latitude in their off-clock activities. In addition, the scholars were encouraged to publish their work—not for profit, but because it would augment the reputation of the school.

  So certain Jesuits practiced alchemy, but not alchemy for profit.

  Still the number working on alchemy was small, and writings on alchemy were usually published bundled with other subjects. Athanasius Kircher, a polymath, included his alchemy with geology, metallurgy, poisons, and various other topics. Kircher's assistant, Lana Terzi (1631–1687), published his recipes for philosophers’ stone and universal medicines along with discussions of thermometers and perpetual-motion machines.

  But they engaged in hands-on, in-the-lab alchemy. Kircher reported stained fingers, singed beard, and choking fumes. He designed equipment, repeated recipes he found in the literature, and reported honestly when they didn't work. He didn't think gold transmutations were possible but other kinds were, and he delighted in performing non-golden transmutations at the teaching institution where he was assigned, the Collegia Romano.

  And, interestingly, Kircher also had a close brush with oxygen.

  Among the collection of curios in the Collegia resided a sealed sample of water from the river Jordan. Curiously, Kircher attributed the fact the water remained unchanged to the lack of air rather to than a miracle. In addition, Lana Terzi studied the works of Sendivogius and considered the possibilities of saltpeter—but neither pursued these ideas further.

  And oxygen bubbled by.

  So do we conclude that mysticism did indeed impede progress toward the chemical revolution? Not really. Kircher, Terzi, and other Jesuits may have limited their investigation because of religious scruples—they believed the desire to make gold was the devil's work and the Paracelsian homunculus an abomination—but also for religious reasons they decried the secrecy, the Decknamen, and the esoteric signs and symbols that obscured alchemical literature.

  And in this way, they supported the move fo
rward to openness in alchemy. There were practical gains to be had—metals, alloys, and paints; purified medicines to help cure the sick; and fertilizers to help feed the hungry.

  They didn't start the revolution, but they started the rumble.

  Sometimes it's good to sidestep the devil.

  Let's see what else the Jesuits have to teach us.

  DEMONSTRATION 17. THE JESUIT WORKROOM

  DISPOSAL

  All dry materials can be disposed of in the regular trash, and all liquids can be rinsed down the sink, followed by a long cool-water flush.

  FIRE FORM THE SKY

  Kircher enjoyed designing equipment for his workroom, and one of his creations employed the sun as a heat source. This intricate idea used a magnifying glass to focus the sun's rays on a concave mirror, which in turn directed the rays onto a furnace. The mirror rode on a track so he could follow the sun's motion and light could reach the furnace any time of day. Because precise temperature control was difficult at the time, all types of heat sources were welcome. In this demonstration, we're going for one specific temperature: Fahrenheit 451.

  Wait for a sunny day; grab a beaker, a piece of paper, a magnifying glass, and safety glasses; and then head outside.

  Once you're in the sunshine, tear off a piece of paper no more than about 4 square inches (about 6 square centimeters) and place it in the beaker. Put on your safety glasses.

  If you've done this as a child for a science class, that's fine, but do it again as an adult. It's still fun.

  Position the magnifying glass between the paper and the sun and move it around until the magnifying glass projects an image of the sun on the paper. Now move the magnifying glass up or down until you have the smallest possible image of the sun on the paper. The smaller the image, the hotter the spot (and it can get impressively hot).

  If it is a nice sunny day and your spot is small enough, you should get a flame pretty quickly. The main purpose of the container is to keep pieces of burning paper from flying off in random directions, but you can also try lighting another piece of paper through the side of the glass container and compare the results.

  FIRE IN THE SKY

  For this demonstration you will need the verdigris you hopefully saved from demonstration 9, some table salt, saltpeter (sodium nitrate), cotton swabs, two shallow dishes or beakers, safety glasses, 70 percent isopropyl alcohol (rubbing alcohol), and a candle with a candleholder or some way to keep it erect (an Erlenmeyer flask will work—one of its many uses).

  Pour out a little rubbing alcohol in one of the shallow dishes or in the beaker while keeping the alcohol a foot or so from the candle (remember we found in demonstration 5 that rubbing alcohol can be flammable). Put water in the other shallow dish or beaker. Make little piles of verdigris, saltpeter, and table salt on a paper towel. Light the candle.

  Wet one of the cotton swabs in rubbing alcohol and then roll the wet end in the verdigris pile to pick up some crystals on the swab. Hold the swab in the flame and admire the beautiful color. Plate 6 in the photo insert is a picture of the flame we achieved with our verdigris. The copper in the verdigris should impart a lovely blue-green hue to the flame. Jabir, the Islamic author from chapter 2, was also aware of this effect and enjoyed it. When you are done, douse the swab in the bowl/beaker of water.

  Take a second cotton swab and do the same thing, but this time with table salt. The sodium in the table salt will cause the flame to be bright yellow. The Alexandrians used sodium salt in their incendiary weapons to make the flames look hotter and more intimidating. As if Greek warriors coming at you with flaming weapons weren't intimidating enough. Now repeat the process but this time with saltpeter. The flame will be about the same color as the table salt flame, but it will hiss, snap, and flare a lot more as the nitrate releases little jolts of oxygen to the flame. Kircher was fascinated by the explosion of fireworks and the color of flames but missed identifying oxygen in the air with nitrates.

  FIRE FROM THE FOREST

  This last demonstration was a source of fascination for the seventeenth-century alchemists, especially the curiosity collectors such as Kircher. In this demonstration we will make an extraction of lignum nephriticum,15 which (according to Monty L. Fetterolf, the demo guy of the crew) has an “eerie moonlit swamp quality.” Well said.

  Hopefully you have procured your sample of lignum nephriticum from the Internet, because this is worth seeing. We were able to find a fairly large specimen of the wood for not much money, but this is raw wood. You can also find lovely polished vases and bowls made from the wood, but these are too beautiful to use and too expensive to chop up.

  You will also need aquarium-pH-lowering solution, baking soda, distilled water, a jar with a lid, a medicine dropper, and a blade (such as a pocketknife) sharp enough to carve wood.

  Once you have your wood, put on your safety glasses and gardening gloves to protect your hands, then, using the blade, slice off chips of the wood by cutting down and away from your body, along the grain of the wood. It should take only a handful of chips to have a successful extraction.

  Put the chips in the jar and pour distilled water over the chips until they are covered by at least an inch of water. Add about a teaspoon (about 5 milliliters) of baking soda and shake the mixture thoroughly. Let the solution sit long enough for the baking soda to settle to the bottom (about fifteen to twenty minutes) and then decant off the liquid into a small beaker. Hold the liquid up to indirect sunlight or room light and view it from several different angles. Pour some of the liquid from one container to another and watch how the colors seem to glow.

  The glow of the lignum nephriticum solution is an example of a phenomenon called fluorescence, which is the absorbance of light of one color and then emission of light of another color. A soon-to-be hero of ours—Robert Boyle—discovered, in his investigations of colors and acids, that acids affect our eerie swamp, too.

  Decant a sample of the lignum nephriticum solution into a separate bottle. Find your pH-lowering solution (see “Stores and Ores”) and add it dropwise to the lignum nephriticum solution, swirling the sample after each drop. Eventually the eerie glow disappears. Then make a solution of baking soda in water; let it sit until the baking soda settles out. Use your dropper to pick up drops just from the top of the solution (so you don't pick up solid) and drop this liquid into the lignum nephriticum solution until there is no more fizzing, then add a drop more. The swamp glow should return, though it may take an hour or more and may not glow as strongly.

  The glow goes away and comes back because the molecular complex that is responsible for the glow has a different structure in an acid environment than it has in a base.

  Pigment molecules in the wood are responsible for the fluorescence, and colonization of the New World was responsible for finding the wood. A Spanish Franciscan friar brought back this native wood from New Spain in the 1500s, where it was used as a treatment for kidney aliments. The extract from lignum nephriticum is in fact an effective diuretic.

  Although they were not allowed to study medicine, on missionary trips to the New World, the Jesuits treated each other and brought back medicinal information when they found it, too. Indeed, it was a Jesuit who brought the indigenous medicine quinine back to a feverish western Europe, which saved many lives.

  Unfortunately, for every spiritual force for good, there always seems to be a counteracting force. Such as, we will see next chapter, the maelstrom of the Thirty Years’ War.

  None can deny that there is no nimbler poyson than this gunpowder. The Basiliske…a man may avoid…but this poyson is found everywhere.

  Johann Rudolf Glauber, alchemist, ca. 1650*

  Johann Glauber condemned combat for good reason: his life neatly bracketed the Thirty Years’ War, a horror that played out in his homeland, the future Germany. During this deluge, bands of mercenaries plundered, raped, tortured, and murdered at will. Farms, fields, and whole villages were destroyed. Starvation, death, and disease raged. Victims could not e
scape—but Johann Glauber did.

  Glauber's life began peacefully enough. His father, the barber of Karlstadt, also served as dentist and surgeon, offered bleedings and enemas, treated wounds, and prepared salves. Through his father, Glauber gained his interest in medicine and alchemy. Perhaps also, by observing his uneducated father prosper, he gained his disdain for formal education. Accordingly, when his father died, fifteen-year-old Glauber declined to complete his schooling and set about educating himself.

  Glauber traveled to the workrooms of metallurgists and pharmacists in the area. Making himself useful, possibly acting as errand boy or laborer, he learned what he could. He may have shown talent; he certainly showed interest, but nothing portended the alchemical savant to come. The change came when he was twenty-one—and may have been the product of a single event.

  The story goes that in the course of his wanderings Glauber came down with a fever and, when it subsided, his stomach “neither desired nor digested any food.”1 In other words, he was seriously constipated. Accordingly, well-wishers urged Glauber to visit a local spring and drink the waters there, which he did, and behold, it cured him.

  Figure 18.1. Johan Glauber. (Image used by permission of Edgar Fahs Smith History of Chemistry Collection. Rare Book and Manuscript Library, University of Pennsylvania.)

  Perhaps dehydrated from his fever, Glauber's symptoms were probably very real and very distressing. In addition to the normal discomfort one would feel in his situation, at the time, constipation was seen as the retention of toxins, and purging was recommended as a remedy for all manner of disease. Furthermore, given the many cures and treatments of the day that didn't work, it was impressive to find one that did.