Transmutation Of Metals Research Articles

Leaven of Dough, Ferment of Gold: The Breadmaking Analogy in Medieval Metallic Transmutation

This paper traces the analogy between the making of bread with ferment (leaven or yeast) and theories of metallic transmutation throughout the Middle Ages. For this purpose it surveys several medieval alchemical writings, including Hortulanus’s influential Commentary on the Emerald Tablet. In this work, the ferment, an essential ingredient of the philosophers’ stone, is portrayed less as an active agent and more as the passive, nutritive earth (terra nutrix) which combines with the soul (anima) in order to yield the stone (lapis). I argue that the background of these theories has both a practical and a medical-theoretical dimension. The practical aspect derives from historical everyday practices of making bread from sourdough, and using old yeast “starter” as a kind of inoculum to speed up the fermentation of a new batch of fresh dough. The medical-theoretical framework for the understanding of ferment action was likely provided by the widely influential Galenic idea of whole substance action (Gr. καθ᾽ὅλην τὴν οὐσίαν, Lat. tota substantia), initially developed by Galen in pharmacology and later imported into alchemy via Arabic medicine. Together, these aspects converge into a successful model of “inoculation-emergence,” which underlies many medieval and early modern theories of fermentation, both medical and alchemical.

Medicine, Life, and Transformations of Matter

This Ambix special issue explores premodern alchemical ideas and practices in their entanglements with medicine. It employs diverse methods, from traditional close reading to the new distant-reading framework of computational humanities, to investigate alchemical thought over a timespan of several centuries. In medieval times, everyday practices could offer heuristic models of material transformation – such as the fermentation of bread as a model for metallic transmutation (Schmechel). Paracelsus relied on “fire” to link his natural philosophy with his medical alchemy; new computational methods show how his ideas evolved over time (Hedesan). Early modern medical pluralism favoured the thriving of chemical medicine in Italy; diplomatic efforts introduced chemical remedies into acknowledged pharmacopoeias (Clericuzio). An English physician offers William Cavendish both practical distillation recipes and the hope of learning more about the principles of chemistry (Begley). In eighteenth-century France, Diderot draws on chemical ideas to blur the conceptual boundary between living and non-living matter (Wolfe). The papers largely adhere to integrated history and philosophy of science (iHPS) and to a pragmatist “operational ideal of knowledge” (Chang). They showcase the interdisciplinarity of premodern scientific thought and examine how medicine and alchemy, but also theory and (everyday) practice informed each other fruitfully across the ages.

Chemistry, Medicine, and Gold-Making: Tycho Brahe, Helwig Dieterich, Otto Tachenius, and Johann Glauber.

17th century chemistry was concerned largely with iatrochemistry (medicinal chemistry) and the transmutation of metals, especially with the purpose of making gold. Thus, Johann Rudolph Glauber made a living making and selling chemicals such as nitric acid and medicaments such as aurum potabile (drinkable gold), but he also believed in the transmutation or "improvement" of metals and the "augmentation" of gold, and he sold recipes for such processes. This perspective aims to provide a snapshot of the range of 17th century chemistry by analysis of the efforts of four representatives to make drugs, chemicals, and gold. It will be concluded that early modern chemists were unable to break out from the conceptual doctrines imposed by Aristotle and Paracelsus, which made transmutation perfectly logical. No further scientific advance could be made until the idea that all things are composed of the same basic constituents was abandoned in favour of the atomic theory.

1300 години от рождението на Гебер – ученият начало и фундамент на арабската алхимия

Geber (Latinized name of Jabir ibn Hayyan (c. 721 – c. 815)) is among the most notable representatives of medieval chemistry. The article, dedicated to the 1300th anniversary of his birth, tries to depict his work as the beginning and groundwork for Arabic alchemy, also serving as a push for the formation of chemistry in the future. The article touches upon his life, characteristics, evaluation of his works, doubts about his identity and authorship. His influences are examined and his achievements in the area of metallurgy (sulfur-mercury theory, characterizing all known metals), knowledge of `secret` (stimulating the transmutation of metals) substances, mineral acids, salts, chemical processes and apparatus, his contributions to practical chemistry prove the broadness of his interests. His rational and practical approach is acknowledged and also his “outer” spiritualism present in the terminology inherited by the authors of Alexandria. The legacy he leaves – his authority, influence on the development of chemistry and followers – Arabic medical alchemists. In the conclusion his services to science and civilization are summarized.

The Changing Visions of Chymistry at Seventeenth-Century Jena: The Two Brendels, Rolfinck, Wedel, and Others

The University of Jena was an important locus for chymistry teaching in Germany throughout the seventeenth century. Zacharias Brendel the Elder and the Younger, Werner Rolfinck, and Georg Wolfgang Wedel were four of the Jena professors who offered courses of chymistry during this time. These four held notably divergent views on the purpose, character, and legitimate content of chymistry, as well as of its proper place within the university. The distinctions among them prove especially clear in their widely differing assessments of metallic transmutation and of other longstanding chymical traditions and pursuits. Significantly, their sequential views do not form any linear progression over time. Instead, they illustrate the continuing disagreements and negotiations about chymistry, its role, and its identity as a discipline. The situation at Jena enriches our understanding of chymistry’s seventeenth-century “didactic tradition” and documents the internal diversity of the subject and of its professors and practitioners.

The roots of the silver tree: Boyle, alchemy, and teleology

Though Robert Boyle called final causes one of the most important subjects for a natural philosopher to study, his own treatise on the subject, the Disquisition about Final Causes, has received comparatively little scholarly attention. In this paper, I explicate Boyle's complex argument against the use of teleological explanations for inanimate bodies, such as metals. The central object of this argument is a mysterious allusion to a silver plant. I claim that the silver plant is best understood as a reference to alchemical product: the Arbor Dianae, an offshoot of George Starkey's recipe for the Philosophers' Stone. Then, I show how the context of alchemy not only clarifies Boyle's argument but also places it within a wider dialectic about matter and teleology. I then contrast the parallel arguments of Boyle and John Ray on the question of whether metals have divine purposes and show that the difference is explained by Boyle's belief in the transmutation of metals.

William Godwin’s Correspondence on Proof Corrections to St. Leon

In William Godwin’s second novel, St. Leon (1799), the eponymous hero has been granted the power to extend life through the fountain of youth and access to unlimited wealth by the transmutation of metals through the philosopher’s stone. Sworn to secrecy, St. Leon eventually alienates his family and attracts the suspicions of the communities in which he operates, despite his overpowering desire to do good, leading to a familiar Godwinian spiral of guilt, remorse, and isolation.1 After its initial publication in 1799, the second edition of 1800, and third edition of 1816, Godwin was invited to revise the novel for inclusion within the first series of Bentley’s Standard Novels. The series was initiated by the publisher Richard Bentley, who purchased cheap copyrights of out-of-print novels and reprinted them within a uniform series, which he started publishing beginning on 25 February 1831.2Bentley’s Standard Novels was a publishing venture in the vein of Anna Lætitia Barbauld’s British Novelists series or Robert Cadell’s Author’s Edition of the Waverley Novels in that it provided cheap reissues of contemporary fictional works to reach a wider audience. The Standard Novels series usually condensed novels into a single volume and issued them on a monthly basis. One of the series’ key claims, according to Michael Sadleir, was that ‘many of the texts therein included were the texts finally approved by their authors, or at least provided with prefaces in which the author’s mature judgment was passed on early work of his or her own’.3 While the new and post-Jacobin framing of Godwin’s St. Leon arguably attenuated his earlier radicalism,4 its inclusion in this series ensured its classic status and theoretically allowed Godwin to produce an authoritative version of the text.

Paracelsus, a Transmutational Alchemist

A scholarly consensus has long held that in redefining alchemy, Paracelsus rejected metallic transmutation. I show here, however, that for most of his career Paracelsus believed that it was possible to change one metal into another, and even late in his short life he did not break with that view. Furthermore, in certain places in his works he also represented himself, occasionally directly and more often obliquely, as a practical transmutationist. Because Paracelsus not only acknowledged that metallic transmutations were theoretically possible but also claimed to have carried them out in practice, we must regard him as (among other things) a transmutational alchemist. As such, he had more in common than historians have generally admitted with both his medieval predecessors and his posthumous followers. The Paracelsian alchemists of the late-sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were not wrong to situate Paracelsus within the alchemical tradition, nor to connect their own goldmaking interests to his.

Astrologie alchemiche: Ermetismi in transizione e culture occidentali

Alchemy is the “sacred art” of the transmutation of metals or human beings, and often these two tendencies are expressed together in an allegorical mode infused with an astrological imager reflecting their mystical nature. The astrology is bound to alchemy in the search for the most favorable moment for commencing an enterprise (catarchic astrology) or in the form of the interrogational method, in which the horoscope of the precise moment at which a query is made to the astrologer is interpreted to provide an answer. Finally, the article illustrates these themes in some ancient manuscripts from Turin’s National University Library.

Transmutation of Tungsten in Fusion and Fission Nuclear Environments

The amount and type of gaseous and metallic transmutants produced in tungsten (W) when used as a plasma-facing armor in magnetic (MFE) and inertial (IFE) confinement fusion systems were determined and compared to those obtained following irradiation in fission reactors. Up to ∽8% metallic transmutants are generated at the expected lifetime of the fusion blanket. Irradiation in fission reactors to the same fast neutron fluence yields a much larger amount of metallic transmutation products than in fusion systems. While the dominant component in fusion systems is rhenium (Re), osmium (Os) is the main transmutation product in fission reactors. The impact on the W properties needs to be assessed. The results of this work will help guide irradiation experiments in fission reactors to properly simulate the conditions in fusion systems by possible direct implantation of transmutation products in irradiated samples. In addition, the results represent a necessary input for modeling activities aimed at understanding the expected effects on properties.

The Chymistry of "The Learned Dr Plot" (1640-96).

In the seventeenth century, there were developing norms of openness in the presentation of scientific knowledge that were at odds with traditions of secrecy among chymists, particularly practitioners of chrysopoeia, or the transmutation of metals. This chapter analyzes how Dr. Robert Plot, the first professor of chymistry at Oxford, negotiated these boundaries within an institutional context. I first delineate his chymical and experimental practice, which incorporated procedures from medieval alchemical sources, particularly the Lullian corpus, as well as more novel practices from seventeenth-century chymistry. Then, I analyze how personal and institutional ambitions and economic considerations shaped to what extent Plot negotiated the boundaries between secrecy and the public dissemination of chymical knowledge.

The End of Alchemy?

The general abandonment of serious endeavor toward metallic transmutation represents a major development in the history of chemistry, yet its exact causes and timing remain unclear. This essay examines the fate of chrysopoeia at the eighteenth-century Académie Royale des Sciences. It reveals a long-standing tension between Académie chemists, who pursued transmutation, and administrators, who tried to suppress it. This tension provides background for Etienne-François Geoffroy's 1722 paper describing fraudulent practices around transmutation. Although transmutation seems to disappear after Geoffroy's paper, manuscripts reveal that most of the institution's chemists continued to pursue it privately until at least the 1760s, long after widely accepted dates for the "demise of alchemy" in learned circles.

Cabala Chymica or Chemia Cabalistica—Early Modern Alchemists and Cabala

This essay investigates the relationships between early modern alchemy and the Jewish mystical tradition of Kabbalah, following its introduction to the Christian West by Giovanni Pico della Mirandola at the end of the fifteenth century, and its promulgation by Johannes Reuchlin in the early sixteenth century. New exponents of Christian Cabala were excited by the exegetical methods of Kabbalah, and some alchemists, seeking fresh ways of interpreting enigmatic alchemical texts and the Book of Nature, experimented with novel combinations of the two practices in the hope of gaining insights into their work. While many of these figures were engaged in the broader concerns of Paracelsian philosophy, those experimenting with combinations of alchemy and Cabala nevertheless spanned the spectrum from metallic transmutation to chemical medicine. While focusing on the investigation of kabbalistic elements in alchemical texts produced by Christian authors, rather than the discussion of alchemical material in Jewish Kabbalistic sources, I also briefly consider one apparently authentic Jewish combination of alchemy and Kabbalah: the Aesch Mezareph, published by Christian Knorr von Rosenroth in the Kabbala Denudata.

Alchemy and the End Times: Revelations from the Laboratory and Library of John Allin, Puritan Alchemist (1623–1683)

John Allin (1623–1683), a Harvard-educated Puritan minister, physician and alchemist, provides an important case study for investigating connections between alchemical practice and millenarian concerns in the seventeenth-century British Atlantic world. This study explores how Allin's Puritan eschatological beliefs drove his alchemical pursuit of the philosophers’ stone, viewed by contemporaries as the panacea that would restore perfect health and longevity to mankind. For Allin, the stone's successful creation signalled assurance of Christ's promised return, while its use would prepare the godly elect for their place in Christ's thousand-year reign on earth that was to follow Judgment Day. As a nonconformist minister in Restoration England, his views led to his ejection from his East Sussex parish, requiring him to seek other sources of income. Allin's work as an alchemical operator in London illuminates his own endeavours to process “prima materia,” apparently a locally sourced species of algae known as nostoc, while his correspondence includes what may be the first extant reference to a planned alchemical laboratory facility at Oxford University. His library of medico-alchemical and exegetical literature also reveals attempts to connect the biblical figure Elias, a harbinger of Christ's Second Coming, to the quest for metallic transmutation. From these standpoints, the life and times of this Puritan alchemist open up new avenues of investigation into trans-Atlantic communities of practitioners, whose networks provide fresh insights into the mechanics of exchanges of ideas, knowledge and materials.

Sir Kenelm Digby and His Alchemical Circle in 1650s Paris: Newly Discovered Manuscripts

A significant cache of hitherto unidentified manuscripts of Sir Kenelm Digby (1603–1665) has been discovered in the Bibliothèque Nationale et Universitaire de Strasbourg. These manuscripts comprise over 5000 pages of material. The documents relate almost entirely to metallic transmutation. About half of the material consists of alchemical treatises (most of them unpublished) by earlier authors — many relate to the transmuter Noël Picard, known as Dubois, executed in 1637 — and show Digby's careful comparison of variant readings in order to obtain the best text. The other half contains transcripts from the otherwise lost notebooks of Joseph Du Chesne, Samuel Cottereau Duclos (including several letters from Johann Rudolf Glauber), and others, as well as reports of experiments and processes carried out by a range of informants and by Digby himself. Significantly, these manuscripts bear witness to an important alchemical circle — of which Digby was a part — active in Paris during the 1650s and 1660s. The members of this circle traded manuscripts and information, and collaborated on a variety of alchemical projects; several members were also involved in other, better-known, scientific groupings of mid-century Paris.

Transmutation of silicon carbide in fusion nuclear environment

The amount and type of metallic transmutants produced in SiC/SiC when used in magnetic (MFE) and inertial (IFE) confinement fusion systems are determined and compared to those obtained following irradiation in fission reactors. Up to ∼1.3% metallic transmutants are generated at the expected lifetime of the fusion blanket. Irradiation in fission reactors to the same fast neutron fluence produces about an order of magnitude lower metallic transmutation products than in fusion systems. While the dominant component in fusion systems is Mg, P is the main transmutation product in fission reactors. The impact on the SiC/SiC properties is not fully understood. The results of this work will help guide irradiation experiments in fission reactors to properly simulate the conditions in fusion systems by possible ion implantation. In addition, the results represent a necessary input for modeling activities aimed at understanding the expected effects on properties.

Documenta inedita

Discorso sopra la Chimica is an early seventeenth-century manuscript on alchemy written by the Florentine priest Antonio Neri, best known as the author of the first published treatise on glassmaking – L’Arte Vetraria (1612) – which was widely read for centuries. The Discorso shows a different face of Neri, that of the alchemist with a profound knowledge of Paraselsian doctrine, dedicated to the transmutation of metals, and an advocate of iatrochemistry. This picture is apparently incompatible with that of the technical glassmaker and the champion of knowledge based on experience. However, even in his Discorso the author affirms the value of experimental practice, and the experimentum has the all-important benefit of legitimizing the validity of alchemical doctrines. Knowledge does not come from reading the books of the sages of antiquity, but from the “practice of many experiences.” This emphasis on experimentation constitutes a unique feature of the Discorso. It was perhaps the ‘modernity’ of Neri’s discussion of alchemy that made the manuscript the object of plagiarism. Careful comparison reveals that an entire chapter of Prodromo, written by the Jesuit Francesco Lana Terzi in 1670, was copied from Neri. In the Discorso old and new are intertwined and validate one other, showing how Neri was a quintessential representative of his time, when scientific models that now appear irreconcilable coexisted, often forming a complex web. In this paper I discuss Antonio Neri and the background to his important work, reflecting on its impact and what it tells us about a fascinating and complex period in the birth of modern science. This is followed by a translation of the complete text of Discorso sopra la Chimica.

The book and the crucible: chemists in search of recognition

From the outset, alchemy had both practical and theoretical value. Alchemists sought the transmutation of metals and the application of their art to medicine; they also espoused a theory of matter, as well as a view of nature and of human knowledge. The status of alchemy and its position in the classification of the sciences was a matter of debate for a long time and was often linked to the assessment of the possibility and legitimacy of the transmutation. The discussion on the status of alchemy and on its relationship to philosophy started in the twelfth century, when alchemy entered the Latin West. Albertus Magnus endeavoured to incorporate alchemy into Aristotelian natural philosophy by maintaining that alchemy had a dual status. In his view, alchemy had a place among the sciences, because it was engaged in the knowledge of causes, notably the generation of metals, but it was also to be regarded as ars because it was practical, although distinct from the mechanical arts. By contrast, Thomas Aquinas (who was sceptical about transmutations) saw alchemy as a practical discipline, to be included among the mechanical arts. Roger Bacon promoted alchemy and maintained that it occupied a central position in experimental science (scientia experimentalis), which, in his view, combined theory and practice. Alchemy was also the subject of sixteenth-century Questiones dealing with the validity and legitimacy of the discipline. Benedetto Varchi’s Questione sull’alchimia (1544) distinguished three different kinds of alchemy: the true, the

La Mayson pour Distiller des Eaües at El Escorial: Alchemy and Medicine at the Court of Philip II, 1556–1598

<i>La Mayson pour Distiller des Eaües</i> at El Escorial: Alchemy and Medicine at the Court of Philip II, 1556–1598

Anonymous on Alchemy, Aristotle, and Creation: An Unedited Thirteenth-Century Text

Around the year 1200 there appeared a Latin translation of Pseudo-Aristotle's De mineralibus, in which the author denied the possibility of the transmutation of metals. This statement, especially when placed in the mouth of the revered Aristotle, was a severe blow to the aim of the alchemists. Indeed it had been Aristotle's theory of the generation of metals in his Meteorologica and his theory of a common origin of all metals that had encouraged the alchemists in their efforts to transmute base metals into gold. This pseudo-Aristotelian challenge to the truth of alchemy seems to have elicited at least one previously unrecognized response. In a short treatise, tucked away in a sixteenth-century manuscript of alchemical miscellany, an anonymous author quotes “Aristotle” saying that the species of metals cannot be transformed or transmuted, but includes the proviso, also taken from Aristotle: unless they be reduced to their primary matter. This materia prima is identified by our author as the moistness that comes from water, water whose creative power our author grounds in Holy Scripture, especially in the hexaemeral tradition of the story of creation from the book of Genesis.