I seem to have been on a run of illustrated books, perhaps as a result of regular visits to a local bookshop, illustrated books have more shelf appeal! This review is of Alchemy by Philip Ball with the lengthy subtitle; An Illustrated History of Elixirs, Experiments, and the birth of Modern Science. My copy is a larger format hardback book: a little shorter than A4 but about as wide. The illustrations are well-reproduced and mixed with the text although each chapter finishes with a series of illustrations with captions.
The book is divided into nine thematic chapters which are very roughly in chronological order. They cover the origins of alchemy, key interests of alchemists, laboratory equipment and the transition to modern chemistry with a final chapter on alchemy in culture.
Ancient Egyptians were key to early alchemy, making sophisticated glassware by the mid to late 15th century BC – the earliest glass dates to 2500BC. They were also making a wide range of chemical preparations including dyes, glazes and cosmetics.
The earliest Egyptian texts regarding alchemy date to the 3rd century AD, they were subsequently translated and greatly expanded by Islamic scholars towards the end of the first millennium from there they entered Europe during the Renaissance. Alchemists were also active in India and China from around at least the beginning of the Current Era.
Alchemy seems to have been prone to poorly attributed texts. For example, many texts are attributed to Jabir ibn Hayyan who probably lived in the 9th century – the broader corpus which he can’t have written is referred to as by “pseudo-Geber”. I wonder whether this issue is more widespread in early writing – a result of the pre-print mechanisms of publishing – rather than just an issue with alchemy.
In common with other scientific and artistic enterprises, alchemists often relied on royal patronage – Holy Roman Emperor Rudolf II (1552-1612) was a keen patron of alchemy in Prague.
Alchemy led to the birth of the laboratory as a separate space filled with a range of equipment which looks familiar even now. A variety of heat sources were central to this, alchemists were referred to as “puffers” as a result of their use of bellows to drive furnaces. The crucible, found in the lab today, comes from the Latin for “little place of torment”! Crucibles from the Hesse region of Germany were particularly sought after – it seems the local clay was very conducive to making crucibles. The bain-marie was invented as an alchemical tool by a, possibly mythical, female alchemist. Distillation, an important process even now, goes back to the 2nd millennium BC.
Converting other metals into gold, transmutation, was a primary concern for Western alchemists for pretty much the entire period that alchemists existed. The earliest bronze, made around 3500BC, was made by heating mixtures of ores not the pure metal, pure tin – one of the components of bronze, was not isolated until 1800BC. Our modern idea of elements dates is fairly recent, dating back to the 17th century. In the beginning the different elemental metals were not easily distinguishable from mixtures or even other elemental metals. Metal workers knew that rocks could be transformed to metals, and that metals could themselves could be transformed.
So why not transmutation? Even Robert Boyle, writing in the 17th century, was not convinced that transmutation was impossible.
Once elements were “discovered” it was realised that converting one element into another element (gold) is impossible. There is a proviso here though, 20th century atomic physics shows that elements can be transformed into other elements by nuclear processes but not by the chemical processes to which alchemists had access. As the physicist Ernest Rutherford said to his colleague Frederick Soddy “For Mike’s sake, Soddy, don’t call it transmutation. They’ll have our heads off as alchemists!”.
Transmutation was not the only subject of alchemical study, as well as broader chemical studies, in the East the search for elixirs to extend life was of more concern. Presumably more esoteric alchemical work sat alongside what we would now consider to be industrial chemistry.
In the West Paracelsus was creating a new sort of medicine based on chemistry rather than the four humours of ancient Greece. Philip Ball has written a biography of Paracelsus which I reviewed here. There’s a parallel here with the alchemists starting to break away from the classical elements (earth, water, fire, air, and aether) – in the same way that Copernicus and Galileo were breaking away from the Ptolemaic model of the universe.
It’s worth noting that the ability to make gold from other metals was potentially disastrous from an economic point of view – attempting to make gold was banned by both the Pope and Henry IV in the 14th and 15th centuries. The search for the philosopher’s stone (a material to carry out transmutation) came to be seen outside alchemy as both a fraudulent activity for some alchemists and a road to ruin for others, it was a byword for obsessive pursuits. Esotericism was long a feature of alchemy, the idea of keeping knowledge only for select adepts.
Throughout this review I have struggled as to when to write “alchemy” and when “chemistry”. Robert Boyle’s 1661, The Skeptical Chymist is often cited as a polemic against alchemy but it was more an effort to identify what was good and what was bad in alchemy to build what was to become chemistry. Some 20th century historians of science were dismissive of alchemy, seeing it as mysticism, hopeless causes and fraud perhaps influenced by the alchemy revival in the 19th century, which focussed on the spiritual side of alchemy. The alchemy Ball describes is one of chemicals, processes and a system of the world which transformed into modern chemistry through the 17th and 18th century with the loss of its mystical, and fraudulent elements.
Alchemy has always been referenced in wider culture, we still talk about alchemy now to reference processes which are almost magical in their effectiveness. I enjoyed this book, it has prompted me to seek out more books about alchemy – Ball includes a useful list of further reading.
