The Chemistry of Alchemy Page 31

  Fireplace ash works well, or campfire ash, as long as it is wood ash. Put a half cup (around 125 milliliters) of the wood ash in a glass or ceramic container and cover the ash with a quarter cup (60 milliliters) of distilled water. Cover the container with a watch glass or plastic wrap.

  Allow this mixture to soak for two weeks, stirring it once a day. At the end of two weeks, take a small sample of the water above the ash and drop the sample on red litmus paper. If the solution turns blue, your lye is ready. If it does not turn blue, let it sit longer.

  COPPER SULFATE

  You may also want to make up copper sulfate solution ahead of time, as copper sulfate takes a while to dissolve.

  Copper sulfate solution can be disposed of by rinsing down the drain, but please do small amounts at a time and allow cool water to run for two to three minutes after each addition.

  Make a solution of copper(II) sulfate by dissolving a half tablespoon (8 milliliters) of copper(II) sulfate (root killer) crystals in about 1 cup (250 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 to below boiling to help. Set the beaker in your cast-iron skillet to do the warming so you don't have vitriol solution sizzling on your burner.

  Stirring also helps, so warming the solution with stirring is the best.

  Make sure you label your solution clearly and store it securely. Pretty blue solutions look as though they could be consumed. This one can't.

  RUST

  Rust is a compound, an oxide of iron. Though efforts are usually made to prevent rust, here we want to make it.

  Wearing your work gloves, tear off a healthy pinch of steel wool. Soak it in vinegar and drain the vinegar. Set the vinegar-soaked steel wool on a paper plate or napkin and leave it in the open for a week or two. You'll have all the rust you need.

  There you have it! A well-stocked alchemical workroom. So get to work!

  Opening quote from James R. Partington, A History of Chemistry, 4 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1962), 2:217.

  PREFACE

  * James R. Partington, A History of Chemistry, 4 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1962), 2:399.

  1. Partington, History of Chemistry, 2:6–7.

  2. Georgius Agricola, De re metallica, translated by Herbert Hoover and Lou Hoover (New York: Dover, 1950), p. xxix.

  APOLOGIA

  * William Eamon, “How to Read a Book of Secrets,” in Secrets and Knowledge in Medicine and Science, 1500–1800, edited by Elaine Leong and Alisha Rankin (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011), p. 12.

  X-RATED ALICHEMY

  * Ben Jonson, The Alchemist (New York: Digireads.com, 2011), Kindle ed., p. 37.

  PART 1. SETTING THE SCENE

  INTRODUCTION TO PART 1: STIRRING THE FIRES

  1. F. Sherwood Taylor, The Alchemists (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1992), p. 69.

  CHAPTER 1. THE ZOSIMOS EFFECT

  * F. Sherwood Taylor, The Alchemists (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1992), p. 59.

  1. Andrew Lawler, “Raising Alexandria,” Smithsonian Magazine, April 2007, http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/Raising-Alexandria.html (accessed April 24, 2013).

  2. S. U. Wisseman, The Virtual Mummy (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 2002), p. 11.

  3. H. Raid, “Egyptian Influence on Daily Life in Ancient Alexandria,” in Alexandria and Alexandrianism, edited by J. Walsh and T. Reese (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1996), p. 30.

  4. P. Loyson, “Chemistry in the Time of the Pharaohs,” Journal of Chemical Education 88 (2011): 146.

  5. Cathy Cobb and Harold Goldwhite, Creations of Fire (New York: Plenum Press, 1995), p. 32.

  6. E. R. Caley, “The Leyden Papyrus X, an English Translation with Brief Notes,” Journal of Chemical Education 3 (1926): 1149.

  7. V. Karpenko, “Not All That Glitters Is Gold: Gold Imitations in History,” AMBIX 54 (2007): 156.

  8. Taylor, Alchemists, p 21.

  9. James R. Partington, A History of Chemistry, 4 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1962), 1:168.

  10. A. J. Liebmann, “History of Distillation,” Journal of Chemical Education 33 (1958): 173.

  11. H. S. El Khadem, “A Lost Text by Zosimos Reproduced in an Old Alchemy Book,” Journal of Chemical Education 72 (1995): 775.

  12. M. Plessner, “Zosimus of Panopolis,” in Dictionary of Scientific Biography, edited by C. C. Gillispie (New York: Scribner, 1971–1990), 14:631.

  13. William R. Newman, Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), Kindle ed., location 224 of 5059.

  14. C. L. Herzenberg, S. V. Meschel, and J. A. Altena, “Women Scientists and Physicians of Antiquity and the Middle Ages,” Journal of Chemical Education 68 (1991): 101.

  15. Herzenberg et al., “Women Scientists and Physicians of Antiquity and the Middle Ages,” p. 101.

  16. H. S. El Khadem, “A Translation of a Zosimos’ Text in an Arabic Alchemy Book,” Journal of the Washington Academy of Sciences 84 (1996): 71.

  17. El Khadem, “A Translation of a Zosimos’ Text,” p. 172.

  18. El Khadem, “A Translation of a Zosimos’ Text,” p. 171.

  19. Taylor, Alchemists, p. 58.

  20. L. Brown, ed., Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles, 5th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 1:50.

  21. Lawrence M. Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy (Synthesis) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), Kindle ed., locations 256–670 of 6359.

  22. Karpenko, “Not All That Glitters Is Gold,” p. 160; Khadem, “Lost Text by Zosimos Reproduced in an Old Alchemy Book,” p. 775.

  23. Encyclopaedia Britannica, online academic edition, s.v. “amalgam,” http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/18351/amalgam (accessed May 9, 2013).

  24. V. Karpenko, “The Chemistry and Metallurgy of Transmutation,” AMBIX 39 (1992): 47.

  25. Karpenko, “Not All That Glitters Is Gold,” p. 160.

  26. United States Mint, “The Composition of the Cent,” http://www.usmint.gov/about_the_mint/fun_facts/?action=fun_facts2 (accessed November 3, 2013).

  CHAPTER 2. ISLAMIC AUTHORS—ROMANCING THE STONE

  * Lawrence M. Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy (Synthesis) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), Kindle ed., location 647 of 6359.

  † William R. Newman, Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), Kindle ed., location 488 of 5059.

  1. Noretta Koertge, ed., New Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vols. 19–25 (Detroit: Charles Scribner, 2008), 22:19.

  2. Charles Gillispie, ed., Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vols. 1–16 (Detroit: Charles Scribner, 2008), 7:39.

  3. F. Sherwood Taylor, The Alchemists (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1992), p. 79.

  4. Henry Leicester, The Historical Background of Chemistry (New York: Dover, 1971), p. 68.

  5. John Norris, “The Mineral Exhalation Theory of Metallogenesis in Pre-Modern Mineral Science,” AMBIX 53 (2006): 47.

  6. Taylor, Alchemists, p. 79.

  7. Sayed Nomanul Haq, Names, Natures, and Things: The Alchemist Jābir ibn Hayyān and His Kitāb al-Abjār (Book of Stones) (Boston: Kluwer Academic, 1994).

  8. Jennifer Heath, The Scimitar and the Veil: Extraordinary Women of Islam (Mahwah, NJ: Hidden Springs, 2004).

  9. John Hudson, The History of Chemistry (New York: Chapman and Hall, 1992), pp. 23–24.

  10. Newman, Promethean Ambitions, Kindle locations 2302–2308 of 5059.

  11. Koertge, New Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 24:212.

  12. Leicester, Historical Background of Chemistry, p. 68.

  13. Principe, Secrets of Alchemy (Synthesis), Kindle locations 103–106 of 6359.

  14. Principe, Secrets of Alchemy (Synthesis), Kindle location 791 of 6359.

  15. C. J. S. Thompson, Alchemy and Alchemists (New York: Dover, 2002), pp. 62–63.

  16. Pamela
H. Smith, “What Is a Secret? Secrets and Craft Knowledge in Early Modern Europe,” in Secrets and Knowledge in Medicine and Science, 1500–1800, edited by Elaine Leong and Alisha Rankin (Burlington, VT: Ashgate, 2011), p. 61, footnote.

  17. W. J. Wilson, “An Alchemical Manuscript by Arnaldus de Bruxella,” Osiris 2 (1936): 246.

  18. Wilson, “Alchemical Manuscript by Arnaldus de Bruxella,” p. 246.

  PART 2. ALCHEMY IN THE MIDDLE

  CHAPTER 3. AULD MICHEAL AND THE FRACTIOUS FRIARS

  * Dante Alighieri, The Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: The Inferno, translated by James Romanes Sibbald (Edinburgh: David Douglas, 1884), Kindle ed., locations 6260–6395 of 7730.

  1. Barbara W. Tuchman, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century (New York: Ballantine Books, 1978), Kindle ed., location 246 of 14167.

  2. John M. Roberts, The Penguin History of the World (New York: Penguin Books, 1990), pp. 499–500.

  3. Charles Gillispie, ed., Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vols. 1–16 (Detroit: Charles Scribner, 2008), 1:99.

  4. Lawrence M. Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy (Synthesis) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), Kindle ed., locations 1108–14 of 6359.

  5. James R. Partington, A Short History of Chemistry, 2nd ed. (London: Macmillan, 1951), pp. 36–37.

  6. Gillispie, Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 1:196.

  7. F. Sherwood Taylor, The Alchemists (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1992), p. 99.

  8. Gillispie, Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 1:377.

  9. Lynn Thorndike, University Records and Life in the Middle Ages (New York: Norton, 1975), p. 146.

  10. William R. Newman, “The Philosophers’ Egg: Theory and Practice in the Alchemy of Roger Bacon,” Micrologus: natura, scuebze e sicuetà medievali 3 (1995): 75.

  11. Herbert George Wells, A Short History of the World (New York: Penguin, 2006), Kindle ed., p. 110.

  12. E. J. Holmyard, Alchemy (New York: Dover), Kindle ed., p. 216.

  13. Gillispie, Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 9:361.

  14. Wells, Short History of the World, p. 26.

  15. Alighieri, Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: The Inferno, Kindle locations 6477–80 of 7730.

  16. Alighieri, Divine Comedy of Dante Alighieri: The Inferno, Kindle location 6343 of 7730.

  17. Bernard Jaffe, Crucibles: The Story of Chemistry from Ancient Alchemy to Nuclear Fission, 4th ed. (New York: Dover, 1976), p. 12.

  18. Noretta Koertge, ed., New Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vols. 19–25 (Detroit: Charles Scribner, 2008), 24:292; Principe, Secrets of Alchemy (Synthesis), Kindle locations 1009–12 of 6359.

  19. Taylor, Alchemists, p. 103.

  20. William R. Newman, Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), Kindle ed., locations 1515–21 of 5059.

  21. Sally D. Solomon et al., “Synthesis of Copper Pigments, Malachite and Verdigris,” Journal of Chemical Education 88 (2011): 1694–97.

  CHAPTER 4. GEBER AND THE SUM OF PERFECTION

  * E. J. Holmyard and Richard Russell, The Works of Geber (Whitefish, MT: Kessinger, 1942), p. 214.

  1. Barbara Tuchman, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century (New York: Ballantine Books, 1978), Kindle ed., location 147 of 14167.

  2. Lawrence M. Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy (Synthesis) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), Kindle ed., locations 1137–44 of 6359.

  3. Charles Gillispie, ed., Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vols. 1–16 (Detroit: Charles Scribner, 2008), 5:113.

  4. Tuchman, Distant Mirror, Kindle location 952 of 14167.

  5. Principe, Secrets of Alchemy (Synthesis), Kindle location 4096 of 6359.

  6. William Newman, “The Genesis of the Summa Perfectionis,” Archives internationales d'histoire des sciences 35 (1985): 240–302.

  7. William Newman, “Technology and Alchemical Debate in the Late Middle Ages,” Isis 80 (1989): 423–45.

  8. William R. Newman, Atoms and Alchemy: Chymistry and the Experimental Origins of the Scientific Revolution (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006), Kindle ed., locations 486–88 of 3621.

  9. William R. Newman, Promethean Ambitions: Alchemy and the Quest to Perfect Nature, 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004), Kindle ed., locations 1541–45 of 5059.

  10. Noretta Koertge, ed., New Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vols. 19–25 (Detroit: Charles Scribner, 2008), 19:108.

  11. Gillispie, Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 1:289.

  12. Lynn Thorndike, University Records and Life in the Middle Ages (New York: Norton, 1975), p. 56.

  13. Koertge, New Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 19:108.

  14. Gillispie, Dictionary of Scientific Biography, 1:289.

  15. Michela Pereira, “Alchemy and the Use of Vernacular Languages in the Late Middle Ages,” Speculum 74 (1999): 336–56.

  16. Thorndike, University Records and Life in the Middle Ages, p. 56.

  17. Tuchman, Distant Mirror, Kindle location 849 of 14167.

  18. Tuchman, Distant Mirror, Kindle location 864 of 14167.

  19. Thorndike, University Records and Life in the Middle Ages, p. 67.

  20. Newman, Promethean Ambitions, Kindle location 1277 of 5059.

  21. Holmyard and Russell, Works of Geber.

  22. Holmyard and Russell, Works of Geber, p. 40.

  23. William Newman, The Summa Perfectionis of Pseudo-Geber: A Critical Edition, Translation, and Study, annotated ed. (Leiden, Neth.: Brill Academic, 1997), pp. 757–58.

  24. Edgar Hill Duncan, “The Yeoman's Canon's ‘Silver Citrinacioun’” Modern Philology 37 (1940): 241–62.

  25. Newman, Summa Perfectionis of Pseudo-Geber, pp. 757–58.

  26. E. R. Caley, “The Leyden Papyrus X, an English Translation with Brief Notes,” Journal of Chemical Education 3 (1926): Recipe 89.

  27. Matteo Martelli, “‘Divine Water’ in the Alchemical Writings of Pseudo-Democritus,” AMBIX 56 (2009): 5–22.

  28. F. Sherwood Taylor, The Alchemists (New York: Barnes and Noble, 1992), pp. 58–59.

  29. A. Truman Schwartz and George B. Kauffman, “Experiments in Alchemy,” Journal of Chemical Education 53 (1976): 236.

  30. Holmyard and Russell, Works of Geber, p. 17.

  31. V. Karpenko, “Not All That Glitters Is Gold: Gold Imitations in History,” AMBIX 54 (2007): 170.

  CHAPTER 5. AQUA VITAE!

  * Leah DeVun, Prophecy, Alchemy, and the End of Time: John of Rupescissa in the Late Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University Press, 2009), Kindle ed., locations 2260–61 of 6486.

  1. Herbert George Wells, A Short History of the World (New York: Penguin, 2006), Kindle ed., p. 51.

  2. Barbara Tuchman, A Distant Mirror: The Calamitous 14th Century (New York: Ballantine Books, 1978), Kindle ed., locations 958–61 of 14167.

  3. Tuchman, Distant Mirror, Kindle location 2602 of 14167.

  4. DeVun, Prophecy, Alchemy, and the End of Time, Kindle locations 4301–4303 of 6486.

  5. Robert E. Lerner, “The Black Death and Western European Eschatological Mentalities,” American Historical Review 86 (1981): 533–52.

  6. Tuchman, Distant Mirror, Kindle locations 4117–19 of 14167.

  7. DeVun, Prophecy, Alchemy, and the End of Time, Kindle locations 1145–48 of 6486.

  8. DeVun, Prophecy, Alchemy, and the End of Time, Kindle location 1142 of 6486.

  9. Lawrence M. Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy (Synthesis) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), Kindle ed., location 1321 of 6359.

  10. DeVun, Prophecy, Alchemy, and the End of Time, Kindle location 1375 of 6486.

  11. Tuchman, Distant Mirror, Kindle locations 4542–43 of 14167.

  12. Lerner, “Black Death and Western European Eschatological Mentalities,” pp. 533–52.

  13. Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science during the First Thirteen Centuries of Our Era, 8 vols. (New York: Columbia Universi
ty Press, 1923), 3:611.

  14. Tuchman, Distant Mirror, Kindle location 4525 of 14167.

  15. Charles Gillispie, ed., Dictionary of Scientific Biography, vols. 1–16 (Detroit: Charles Scribner, 2008), 1:107.

  CHAPTER 6. PHILOSOPHER’ STONE

  * Ben Jonson, The Alchemist (New York: Digireads.com, 2011), Kindle ed., p. 41.

  1. James R. Partington, A History of Chemistry, 4 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1962), 1:88.

  2. Salomon Trismosin, Splendor Solis, edited by Occultum Lapidem, translated by “J. K.” (London: K. Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1920), Kindle ed., location 869 of 965.

  3. Giano Lacinio, The New Pearl of Great Price (Charleston, SC: Forgotten Books, 2012), p. 78.

  4. Florian Ebeling, The Secret History of Hermes Trismegistus: Hermeticism from Ancient to Modern Times (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 2007), pp. 46–47, 96.

  5. “Keynes MS. 28,” as translated by Isaac Newton, in William R. Newman, “Chymistry of Isaac Newton,” Indiana University, June 2010, http://purl.dlib.indiana.edu/iudl/newton/ALCH00017 (accessed March 29, 2014).

  6. C. J. S. Thompson, Alchemy and Alchemists (New York: Dover, 2002), p. 70.

  7. William Newman, “An Overview of Roger Bacon's Alchemy,” in Roger Bacon and the Sciences: Commemorative Essays, edited by Jeremiah Hackett (Leiden, Neth.: Brill Academic, 1997), p. 328.

  8. Trismosin, Splendor Solis, Kindle location 875 of 965.

  9. Lawrence M. Principe, The Secrets of Alchemy (Synthesis) (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2012), Kindle ed., location 2113 of 6359.

  10. W. J. Wilson, “An Alchemical Manuscript by Arnaldus de Bruxella,” Osiris 2 (1936): 220–405.

  11. Leah DeVun, “The Jesus Hermaphrodite: Science and Sex Difference in Premodern Europe,” Journal of the History of Ideas 69 (2008): 193–218.

  12. Lawrence M. Principe, “‘Chemical Translation’ and the Role of Impurities in Alchemy; Examples from Basil Valentine's Triumph-Wagen,” AMBIX 34 (1987): 21–30.

  13. L. Brown, ed., Shorter Oxford English Dictionary on Historical Principles, 5th ed. (New York: Oxford University Press, 2002), 2:1934.

  14. Jonathan Hughes, “The Humanity of Thomas Charnock, an Elizabethan Alchemist,” in Mystical Metal of Gold: Essays on Alchemy and Renaissance Culture, edited by Stanson Linden (Brooklyn, NY: AMS Press, 2007), p. 3.