The Chemistry of Alchemy Page 8

  This idea wasn't altogether new to the Church, they had always said they would take any gold that alchemists could produce, if and when they produced it, and there had been a distillery in the papal residence in Avignon since the mid-1300s. In fact, some alchemists found favor in the papal court by making medicines of distilled alcohol seeped in herbs and flavorings: liqueur. The person who brought the aqua vitae to Rupescissa, the “man of God, and my friend,”8 obviously knew of its medical use. Yet Rupescissa was particularly eloquent in his enthusiasm for the new product. To name this pure spirit of wine, Rupescissa turned to Aristotle's notion of an eternal, heavenly element beyond the four elements of earth, fire, water, and air—a fifth element, a fifth essence, a quinta essence, a quintessence—and he said there would be more; he said other substances would be distilled down to their ultimate, purest form, and more wonderful products would be produced. If alcohol, the quintessence of wine, could preserve meat from corruption, then would not another quintessence have preservative power for people?9 Blood, for instance, was the source of life, so Rupescissa reasoned its quintessence would be the wellspring of youth. To the tired and tried leadership of the Catholic Church, the idea of revitalization must have seemed worth a second look.

  In 1354, Rupescissa finally stood trial with other friars, but before trial he was allowed to write down his views to be appraised by the curia. On review, Rupescissa was called crazy and a fool, but his codefendants burned at the stake and Rupescissa did not. Accordingly, Rupescissa returned to his cell to write more, and the good fathers continued to read his books.

  In many ways, Rupescissa had a point. Not about the powers of distilled blood, perhaps, but certainly about the necessity for pure medicines. These were desperate times, and desperate measures were taken for medicine, such as fresh donkey dung for the plague, but there were medicines that worked, too. Iron compounds helped with anemia, and tin salts could dispel worms. Yet all the virtues of the medicines would be pointless if they carried poisonous impurities too.

  But with the hyperbole of the day, Rupescissa wrote of alchemy as though it were an accomplished fact. Not if or when alchemists made metals, but the metals alchemists made. Not the possible powers of the quintessence of distilled blood, but powers he stated without flinching. He wrote copiously on the methods of distillation and on materials and techniques of alchemy. He wrote of recipes for gold, silver, and even the philosophers’ stone. But how could he carry out alchemical experiments in a cell that did not always have a candle? The answer, of course, is that he did not. There is no evidence Rupescissa did any alchemical experimentation at all.10 Most likely, he compiled the work of others and did his alchemy with paper, not fire.

  It must be noted that Rupescissa's practice of copying without crediting was considered an accepted custom of the day. It was not considered illegal, immoral, or plagiarism.11 But because Rupescissa was a parchment alchemist, not a kettle alchemist, for all his pain and suffering, for all the anguish of jail, solitude, and defilement, Rupescissa cannot be our hero. We have set ourselves the goal of claiming only those heroes who actually performed alchemy, so we have picked someone else, someone who could have been the friend who brought Rupescissa his first glass of aqua vitae, had they not lived on opposite sides of France. Yet Thomas of Bologna did get around, so one never knows.

  THOMAS OF BOLOGNA

  As Robert E. Lerner wrote in his paper The Black Death and Western European Eschatological Mentalities,

  Robert Benchley once remarked that in every news photo of epoch-making events there always seems to be a man in a derby hat looking in the opposite direction from the action: on Bloody Sunday in St. Petersburg or assassination day in Sarajevo, a “Johnny-on-the-spot” is always looking up at a clock, picking his teeth, or waving insouciantly at the camera.12

  This man, in the middle of the Black Death and Hundred Years’ War could have been our hero, Thomas of Bologna.

  The Italian Thomas of Bologna served as alchemist and physician to Charles V of France (Charles the Wise) from around 1364 to the king's death in 1380. During these years, life was good for Thomas. He, like Rupescissa, saw the quintessence of wine as a gift from God and a powerful medicine. But he, unlike Rupescissa, enjoyed his freedom and employment at court. His duties? Be available when needed and keep the quintessence coming.

  Lynn Thorndike, whose monumental history of magic and science extended to thirteen volumes, described Thomas as “something of a charlatan, [who] dabbled not a little in the occult…the sort of man who was more likely to impress a court…with his pseudo-learning than to succeed at a university before the critical eyes of colleagues.”13

  But when his wife and four-year-old daughter joined him in France after the second wave of plague (the Children's Plague), he showed he had some command of letters. He taught his daughter, Christine, Latin, philosophy, and the science of the day. He must have done a good job because she turned out to be a poet and a historian. Called Christine of Pisan, she wrote a history of the reign of Charles V, her father's patron, and according to Tuchman, was the only woman of the fourteenth century known to have made a living by her pen.14

  By his daughter's account, Thomas acquired a doctorate from the University of Bologna, where he taught astrology before being called to France. For all his classical education, however, her honored father clearly practiced the occult. One notable example was his effort to aid his patron in his battle against the English. He made images of English soldiers and, while chanting spells, buried them facedown in distance corners of France. Pretty creative.

  Unfortunately, his medicines tended to be creative, too. According to a letter to Bernard of Trivisan (who we meet again next chapter), he put his faith in medicines made with gold—and mercury. Whether these remedies caused problems for Charles the Wise is uncertain, but when Thomas administered them to the next king, Charles the Mad, the royal entourage began rumbling. Perhaps worried he might be accused of intentionally harming the king, an offense for which the torture did not stop at confession, Thomas asked Bernard to verify the medicines were not poisons. Thomas swore his servants had taken the medicines with no ill effect (he didn't mention trying it himself), but Bernard was less than effusive in his support. Fortunately, Thomas was not called to task. The real complaint turned out to be that the gold used in the treatment was false gold, but Thomas explained that as a medicine, the gold should not have been tested by the fire.

  Thus, Thomas continued his life as court distiller and doctor until eventually the alchemist and astrologer died peacefully in bed, at the hour, said his daughter, he had cast. But before he died, Thomas of Bologna tried his talents at the ultimate alchemists’ dream: the philosophers’ stone.

  In fact, we'll try our hand next chapter, too.

  But first…to the still!

  DEMONSTRATION 5. BURNING WATERS

  Distillation, as a technique for separating and purifying mixtures, has a venerable history in alchemy. The principle of operation is straightforward: some things evaporate more easily than others. Pour a quarter teaspoon (about a milliliter) of rubbing alcohol on a paper towel. On another paper towel, pour a quarter teaspoon of water. Getting a teaspoon of water can be trickier because water tends to bead up and rise above the edge of the teaspoon, but it can be leveled off with the flat edge of a knife. After an hour, look at your puddles. The rubbing-alcohol puddle should be nearly gone while the water puddle is still visible. This difference arises because rubbing alcohol evaporates more easily than water.

  In a distillation, a mixture of two or more liquids is heated in a pot and the vapor that comes off is collected. This vapor will be richer in the component that is easiest to evaporate.

  The equipment designed by alchemists to perform this operation was legion and elaborate, but the basic pieces are a vessel in which the material to be distilled is heated (the still pot) and an alembic (which is a still head to receive and cool vapors). In the art that accompanies the part 4 opener (page 237), the appara
tus on the second shelf down, third in from the left, shows a simple still pot with an alembic on top, and there are other distillation apparatuses on the shelves.

  The western-European alchemists developed several other unique distillation devices to meet their needs, including the invention by an Italian physician Taddeo Alderotti (1223–1295) to extract nearly pure alcohol by the distillation of wine.15

  Born in abject poverty in thirteenth-century Florence, Alderotti was an adult before he could start his education, but once at the University of Bologna he advanced rapidly and stayed after to teach. Alderotti was one of the founders of the medical school at Bologna and introduced several innovative teaching techniques, including the Consilia, or collection of clinical cases that discussed a disease and methods used to treat it.

  Alderotti was innovative in his search for medicines, too, and it was in the search for medicines he invented an improvement to the standard still that allowed distillation of wine down to 90 percent alcohol. To get the cleanest separation, it is best to cool the vapors coming off the liquid so they will condense and get out of the way of new vapor attempting to come out of the pot. Alderotti's apparatus accomplished this with a tightly sealed still head fitted with water-cooled coils. By repeated distillations with this apparatus, nearly pure alcohol could be obtained. To get even better separation, a pure dry salt could be added to absorb some of the water. But once again, it would not work unless the salt was pure and dry.

  Purity, purity, purity. The alchemists’ battle cry.

  DISPOSAL

  Materials from this demonstration can be disposed of down the drain, especially if the neighbors get curious.

  BURNING WATER

  To do this distillation we need the equipment from demonstration 1: the still pot (cooking pot or beaker), clay flowerpot, 5-foot length of copper tubing, cast-iron skillet, and two receiving flasks made of either plastic or glass but not paper or Styrofoam. We will be doing this distillation with the same procedure we used for the saltwater separation, with a few modifications.

  First, an additional safety instruction: do not try this demonstration with ethanol because if you do, you could end up in jail, and jail is not a safe place to be.

  Seriously, distilling grain alcohol—or any alcohol that comes from fermented food substance—is illegal by federal law. You don't have to check the regulations in your state. Illegal. Guaranteed. And dangerous. Don't drink anything made in these demonstrations, and certainly don't drink anything run through this still. Alcohols are very good solvents and can leach out material from anything they touch, including clay pots and copper tubing, and make a stew of very nasty poisons. In fact, the type of alcohol we will be distilling is not the same as the alcohol in highballs and is itself a poison.

  That said, put on your safety glasses and get out the rubbing alcohol and safety matches recommended for purchase in “Stores and Ores.” Look on the label of the rubbing alcohol to see the percentage alcohol. If the label says 35 percent alcohol or less, you are all set. If it is 50 percent to 70 percent alcohol, it will burn just the way it is and you'll have to dilute it. To make sure your alcohol does or does not burn, try lighting it using the following procedure.

  Put the alcohol in a fireproof container (sorry about that, but we feel compelled to say it) such as a glass bowl. Have a fire extinguisher at hand (you won't need it unless you try to light too much…and there is an earthquake and the flaming fluid spills…onto a pile of desiccated tinder—but then one never knows).

  Carefully pour about a tablespoon (about 15 milliliters) of rubbing alcohol in the fireproof container. Go outside (you don't want to set off a sprinkler system).

  Find a patch of shade because the flame can be hard to see in bright light. Light a safety match and hold it at the surface of the alcohol. If the alcohol is 35 percent or less, it should not catch fire. If it is 50 percent to 70 percent, it should catch immediately and burn with a lovely blue and yellow flame.

  Now, if your alcohol burns, you want to dilute your alcohol so you can prove to yourself that the distillation purifies the alcohol. If your alcohol is 70 percent alcohol, take a cup (about 240 milliliters) of alcohol and mix it with 2 cups of water. If you have a different strength rubbing alcohol but it was able to sustain the flame, you can try adding small amounts of water until you have about 3 cups of a mixture that doesn't burn.

  Put 3 cups of your diluted alcohol (or already-diluted alcohol) into the still pot. Add the clay-pot still head and copper cooling tube just as we did in the first demonstration. This time you'll want to make very certain the still is well sealed with clay so gases can't escape. You want the vapor to go into the copper tube and condense—not onto the burner or heat source.

  We need to add another note of caution here. You must put your cooking pot in the cast-iron skillet so if there are any spills, they will spill into the skillet and not onto the hot burner. If you have a gas range, do not do this distillation on your stove, but use a portable heat source such as described in “Stores and Ores.” The fumes are flammable, too, so you don't want an open flame near the still.

  Position a receiving flask (large enough to hold 3 cups—720 milliliters) under the end of the copper tubing. Turn the hotplate on at about one-half full power, and wait. You don't want vigorous boiling, so if you think this is starting to happen, turn down the heat.

  In about a half hour you should start seeing liquid dropping out of the tube and into your receiving flask. When you've collected about a half cup (120 milliliters), shut off your hotplate or burner and switch out your receiving flask for an empty one—remembering that the copper tubing can be hot because of the condensing vapor.

  When you feel confident that your distillation has stopped and the still is safely secured, you can leave the setup, take your collected sample away from the still (alcohol fumes can catch on fire, too), and see if it will light now that you've distilled it.

  If it does, you've done an admirable alchemical distillation.

  On to the philosophers’ stone!

  ’Tis a stone, and not a stone; a spirit, a soul, and a body: Which if you do dissolve, it is dissolved; If you coagulate, it is coagulated; If you make it to fly, it flieth.

  Ben Jonson, The Alchemist, ca. 1610*

  Our discussion of the philosophers’ stone follows our discussion of the Antichrist for a reason. There are parallels. Building on a few statements in the Bible, commentators created the mythos of the Antichrist, embellished, expanded, and sanctified by human imagination. So it was with the philosophers’ stone. The Jabirian Islamic authors, assimilating ideas from both East and West, proposed a material, an elixir, might be found that could cure the sick metals (that is, lead, tin, and iron) and make them well (that is, gold and silver)—but they did not say they had it, just that it would be nice if they did.

  Nonetheless, when this idea came through the translators to western Europe, it gained a life of its own and a name of its own: the philosophers’ stone. Just as a fascination with the Antichrist rose from the horrible things the beast might do, a fascination with the philosophers’ stone arose from the wonderful things it might do. In the hands of the western Europeans this material, when found, would turn any metal into gold, turn rocks into gems, and revive dead plants. Remember our gold multiplication from Auld Michael and the fractious friars? Small change! The philosophers’ stone would multiply one hundred times, one thousand times, even infinite times its own weight in base metal into gold—and gold better than natural gold.1 The stone would cure all that was curable and prolong a man's life until the end set by God. All wounds would be healed and all poisons annulled. Dissolved in “strong alcoholic wine…It [would rejuvenate] the aged and make…women prolific.”2

  The western-European alchemists sallied forth in search of the philosophers’ stone, convinced they would find it—they had it on good authority.

  PROOF BY AUTHORITY

  A word needs to be said about proof by authority. In The New Pearl of Great
Price, said to be penned around 1330 by a certain Petrus Bonus of Ferrara and edited by the Franciscan friar Janus Lacinius (but probably written by the friar dodging responsibility—and censor—with a pseudonym), the author states explicitly: “We may prove the truth of our Art (1) By the testimony of the Sages (2) By the most forcible arguments (3) By analogy, and manifest examples.”3 The “testimony of the Sages” was proof by authority.

  And although we would like to believe that our modern, sophisticated logic is immune to such persuasions, we know that's not true. Our entire educational system is based on proof by authority! Moreover, proof by authority carries its own proof—it builds—one authority on the other. So it was that the alchemists believed Bonus, and Bonus based his beliefs on “Anaxagoras, Socrates, Plato,…Geber, Rhasis,…Homer,” and many others, including a certain Hermes Trismegistus, which, it must be admitted, is a pretty authoritative-sounding name.

  HERMES TRISMEGISTUS

  What was the source of Hermes's authority? A short poem discovered by Sarah, the wife of Abraham, written on an emerald tablet clutched in the hands of Hermes Trismegistus as he lay buried in his tomb.4 Given the many improbabilities of the legend, including the role of Sarah as gravedigger, the origin of the poem has been the target of extensive research. It is now believed to have been composed by an Islamic author between the sixth and eighth centuries and translated into Latin before 1200. One of the many translations into English is given below.

  Tis true without lying, certain and most true.

  That which is below is like that which is above and that which is above is like that which is below to do the miracles of one only thing.

  And as all things have been and arose from one by the mediation of one: so all things have their birth from this one thing by adaptation.