The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry

The study of the properties of the elements shows that these substances fall into groups, the members of each of which are like one another, and form compounds which are similar...

The _Sacred Art_, which had its origin and home in Egypt, was very definitely associated with the religious rites, and the theological teaching, recognised by the state. The Egy...

In the last chapter I tried to describe the alchemical view of the interdependence of different substances. Taking for granted the tripartite nature of man, the co-existence in...

The alchemists thought that the most effectual method of separating a complex substance into more simple substances was to subject it to the action of heat. They were constantly...

For thousands of years before men had any accurate and exact knowledge of the changes of material things, they had thought about these changes, regarded them as revelations of s...

It was known to many observers in the later years of the 17th century that the product of the calcination of a metal weighs more than the metal; but it was still possible, at th...

The alchemists were sure that the intention of nature regarding metals was that they should become gold, for gold was considered to be the most perfect metal, and nature, they s...

The system which began to be called _alchemy_ in the 6th and 7th centuries of our era had no special name before that time, but was known as _the sacred art, the divine science,...

A modern writer, Mr A.E. Waite, in his _Lives of the Alchemystical Philosophers_, says: "The physical theory of transmutation is based on the composite character of the metals,...

I have tried to show that alchemy aimed at giving experimental proof of a certain theory of the whole system of nature, including humanity. The practical culmination of the alch...

The vagueness of the general conceptions of alchemy, and the attribution of ethical qualities to material things by the alchemists, necessarily led to the employment of a langua...

In the preceding chapter I have referred to the frequent use made by the alchemists of their supposition that nature follows the same plan, or at any rate a very similar plan, i...

The experimental study of combustion made by Lavoisier proved the correctness of that part of Stahl's phlogistic theory which asserted that all processes of combustion are very...

Alchemical books abound in quotations from the writings of _Geber_. Five hundred treatises were attributed to this man during the middle ages, yet we have no certain knowledge o...