Argyropoeia and Chrysopoeia of the pseudo-Democritus,
with many receipts for colouring metals, making artificial
precious stones, effecting the diplosis or doubling of
metals, &c. They give illustrations of the apparatus employed,
and their close relationship to the Greek is attested by
the frequent occurrence of Greek words and the fact that
the signs and symbols of the Greek alchemists appear almost
unchanged. The other portion seems of somewhat later date.
Another Syriac MS., in the library of Cambridge University,
contains a translation of a work by Zosimus which is so far
unknown in the original Greek. Berthelot gives reproductions
of the British Museum MSS. in vol. ii. of La Chimie au moyen
Several alchemistical treatises, written in Arabic, exist
in manuscript in the National Library at Paris and in the
library of the university of Leiden, and have been reproduced
by Berthelot, with translations, in vol. iii. of La Chimie
au moyen age. They fall into two groups: those in one are
largely composed of compilations from Greek sources, while
those in the other have rather the character of original
compositions. Of the first group the most interesting and
possibly the oldest is the Book of Crates; it is remarkable
for containing some of the signs used for the metals by the
Greek alchemists, and for giving figures of four pieces of
apparatus which closely resemble those depicted in Greek
MSS., the former being never, and the latter rarely, found
in other Arabic MSS. Its concluding words suggest that its
production was due to Khalid ben Yezid (died in 708), who
was a pupil of the Syrian monk Marianus, and according to
the Kitab-al-Fihrist was the first Mussulman writer on
alchemy. The second group consists of a number of treatises
professing to be written by Jaber, celebrated in Latin alchemy
as Geber (q.v..) Internal evidence suggests that they are not
all from the same hand or of the same date, but probably they
are not earlier than the 9th nor later than the 12th century.
The Arabic chroniclers record the names of many other writers
on alchemy, among the most famous being Rhazes and Avicenna.
But the further development of alchemy took place in the West
rather than in the East. With the spread of their empire
to Spain the Arabs took with them their knowledge of Greek
medicine and science, including alchemy, and thence it passed,
strengthened by the infusion of a certain Jewish element, to
the nations of western Europe, through the medium of Latin
translations. The making of these began about the 11th
century, one of the earliest of the translators, Constantinus
Africanus, wrote about 1075, and another, Gerard of Cremona,
lived from 1114 to 1187. The Liber de compositione alchemiae,
which professes to be by Morienus--perhaps the same as the
Marianus who was the teacher of Khalid--was translated by
Robertus Castrensis, who states that he finished the work in
1182, and speaks as if he were making a revelation--``Quid
sit alchemia nondum cognovit vestra Latinitas.'' The earlier
translations, such as the Turba Philosophorum and other
Works printed in collections like the Artis auriferae quam
chemiam vocant (1572), Theatrum chemicum (1602), and
J. J. Manget's Bibliotheca chemica curiosa (1702), are
confused productions, written in an allegorical style, but
full of phrases and even pages taken literally from the Greek
alchemists, and citing by name various authorities of Greek
alchemy. They were followed by treatises of a different
character, clearer in matter, more systematic in arrangement,
and reflecting the methods of the scholastic logic; these are
farther from the Greek tradition, for although they contain
sufficient traces of their ultimate Greek ancestry, their
authors do not know the Greeks as masters and cite no Greek
names. So far as they are Latin versions of Arabico-Greek
treatises, they must have been much remodelled in the course
of translation; but there is reason to suppose that many of
them, even when pretending to be translations, are really
original compositions. It is curious that although we possess
a certain number of works on alchemy written in Arabic, and
also many Latin treatises that profess to be translated from
Arabic, yet in no case is the existence known of both the
Arabic and the Latin version. The Arabic works of Jaber, as
contained in MSS. at Paris and Leiden, are quite Aissimiiar
from the Latin works attributed to Geber, and show few if any
traces of the positive chemical knowledge, as of nitric acid
(aqua dissolutiva or fortis) or of the mixture of nitric
and hydrochloric acids known as aqua regis or regia, that
appears in the latter. The treatises attributed to Geber, in
fact, appear to be original works composed not earlier than the
13th century and fathered on Jaber in order to enhance their
authority. If this view be accepted, an entirely new light
is thrown on the achievements of the Arabs in the history of
chemistry. Gibbon asserts that the Greeks were inattentive
either to the use or to the abuse of chemistry (Decline and
Fall, chap. xiii.), and gives the Arabs the credit of the
origin and improvement of the science (chap. lii.).2 But
the chemical knowledge attributed to the Arabs has been so
attributed largely on the basis of the contents of the Latin
Geber, regarded as a translation from the Arabic Jaber. If,
then, those contents do not represent the knowledge of Jaber,
and if the contents of other Latin translations which there
is reason to believe are really made from the Arabic, show
little, if any, advance on the knowledge of the Alexandrian
Greeks, evidently the part played by the Arabs must be less, and
that of the Westerns greater, than Gibbon is prepared to admit.
The descent of alchemistical doctrine can thus be traced
with fair continuity for a thousand years, from the Greeks
of Alexandria down to the time when Latin alchemy was
firmly established in the West, and began to be written
of by historical authors like Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon
and Arnoldus Villanovanus in the 13th century. But side
by side with this literary transmission Berthelot insists
that there was another mode of transmission, by means of the
knowledge of practical receipts and processes traditional
among jewellers, painters, workers in glass and pottery, and
other handicraftsmen. The chemical knowledge of Egyptian
metallurgists and jewellers, he holds, was early transmitted
to the artisans of Rome, and was preserved throughout the
dark ages in the workshops of Italy and France until about
the 13th century, when it was mingled with the theories of
the Greek alchemists which reached the West by way of the
Arabs. Receipts given in the Leiden papyrus reappear in
the Compositiones ad Tingenda and the Mappae Clavicula,
both workshop receipt books, one known in an 8th-century
MS. at Lucca, and the other in a 10th-century MS. in the
library of Schlettstadt; and again in such works as the De
Artibus Romanorum of Eraclius and the Schedula Diversarum
Artium of Theophilus, belonging to the 11th or 12th century.
Theory of Transmutation.--The fundamental theory of the
transmutation of metals is to be found in the Greek alchemists,
although in details it was modified and elaborated by the
Arabs and the Latin alchemists. Regarding all substances as
being composed of one primitive matter--the prima materia,
and as owing their specific differences to the presence of
different qualities imposed upon it, the alchemist hoped, by
taking away these qualities, to obtain the prima materia
itself, and then to get from it the particular substance he
desired by the addition of the appropriate qualities. The
prima materia was early identified with mercury, not ordinary
mercury, but the ``mercury of the philosophers,'' which was the
essence or soul of mercury, freed from the four Aristotelian
elements--earth, air, fire and water--or rather from the
qualities which they represent. Thus the operator had to
remove from ordinary mercury, earth or an earthy principle or
quality, and water or a liquid principle, and to fix it by
taking away air or a volatile principle. The prima materia
thus obtained had to be treated with sulphur (or with sulphur
and arsenic) to confer upon it the desired qualities that were
missing. This sulphur again was not ordinary sulphur, but some
principle derived from it, which constituted the philosopher's
stone or elixir--white for silver and yellow or red for
gold. This is briefly the doctrine that the metals are
composed of mercury and sulphur, which persisted in one form
or another down to the 17th century. Of course there were
numerous variations and refinements. Thus in the Speculum
Naturale of Vincent of Beauvais (c. 1250) it is said that
there are four spirits--mercury, sulphur, arsenic and sal
ammoniac-- and six bodies--gold, silver, copper, tin, lead and
iron.3 Of these bodies the two first are pure, the four last
impure. Pure white mercury, fixed by the virtue of white
non-corrosive sulphur, engenders in mines a matter which
fusion changes into silver, and united to pure clear red
sulphur it forms gold, while with various kinds of impure
mercury and sulphur the other bodies are produced. Vincent
attributes to Rhazes the statement that copper is potentially
silver, and any one who can eliminate the red colour will
bring it to the state of silver, for it is copper in outward
appearance, but in its inmost nature silver. This statement
represents a doctrine widely held in the 13th century, and
also to be found in the Greek alchemists, that everything
endowed with a particular apparent quality possesses a hidden
opposite quality, which can be rendered apparent by fire.
Later, as in the works attributed to Basil Valentine, sulphur,
mercury and salt are held to be the constituents of the metals.
It must be noted that the processes described by the alchemists
of the 13th century are not put forward as being miraculous
or supernatural; they rather represent the methods employed by
nature, which it is the end of the alchemist's art to reproduce
artificially in the laboratory. But even among the late
Arabian alchemists it was doubted whether the resources of
the art were adequate to the task; and in the West, Vincent of
Beauvais remarks that success had not been achieved in making
artificial metals identical with the natural ones. Thus he
says that the silver which has been changed into gold by the
projection of the red elixir is not rendered resistant to the
agents which affect silver but not gold, and Albertus Magnus
in his De Mineralibus --the De Alchemia attributed to him
is spurious--states that alchemy cannot change species but
merely imitates them--for instance, colours a metal white to
make it resemble silver or yellow to give it the appearance of
gold. He has, he adds, tested gold made by alchemists, and
found that it will not withstand six or seven exposures to
fire. But scepticism of this kind was not universal. Roger
Bacon--or more probably some one who usurped his name--declared
that with a certain amount of the philosopher's stone he could
transmute a million times as much base metal into gold, and
on Raimon Lull was fathered the boast, ``Mare tingerem si
mercurius esset.'' Numerous less distinguished adepts also
practised the art, and sometimes were so successful in their
deceptions that they gained the ear of kings, whose desire
to profit by the achievements of science was in several
instances rewarded by an abundant crop of counterfeit coins.
Later History of Alchemy.--In the earlier part of the
16th century Paracelsus gave a new direction to alchemy by
