AN ALCHEMIST.
From an engraving dated 1576.
In the year A.D. 1260, Albertus Magnus, formerly a Dominican monk, was made master of the sacred palace at the court of Rome, and afterwards Bishop of Ratisbon. This great philosophical student was learned in all the then known arts of chemistry, and his manuscripts and works were copied by the thousand. All kinds of extraordinary powers were attributed to him, and it was commonly stated that he could make gold, and that he was a magician. Accused of “having dealings” with the evil one, he resigned his high position and returned to his cloistered cell to carry on his favourite researches and end his days. Next we come to Vincent de Beauvais, often called the Pliny of the middle ages. He, too, was accused of sorcery, and it is said that “at midnight people would creep along the quays of the Seine towards his laboratory in St. Chapelle yard, to see if they could get a glimpse reflected in the river of the magic furnaces in which De Beauvais was supposed to evoke his familiar spirit”.
About the same time Raymond Lulli became known to fame. He also was a monk, and born in the island of Majorca, but having a roving disposition he wandered over Europe. He wrote several works on alchemy, among others Libilli Aliquot Chemici, etc. Fabulous stories are related of his adventures; and he was cruelly stoned to death by the populace in Tunis, in 1315. He left behind him a following of believers, who called themselves Lullists and spread all over Europe. The genius of the West at this time was Arnauld de Villeneuve, who made several important discoveries in chemistry. His researches were particularly directed to the relation of chemistry to medicine. He is credited with having discovered sulphuric and other acids, and is said to have been the first to distil alcohol or spirit of wine.
Contemporary with these men of learning was our own Roger Bacon, whose love for his art nearly cost him his life, besides many years in prison. The discoverer of gunpowder and the telescope spent most of his life in experimental researches, with the result that he revolutionised the art of war, and gave to astronomers the power of exploring the heavens. He was a man of great ability, never justly appreciated by his contemporaries, and has been rightly named the father of experimental physics. He described most of the laws which regulate matter, and the regular motion of the planets. Although a man of undoubted knowledge and great power of conception, he was bitten with the mania of endeavouring to discover the philosopher’s stone, his views respecting which he set forth in his work entitled Radix Mundi. Following Bacon came Antonio Quainer, of Pavia, who was the first to manufacture artificial mineral waters.
It has been said by some that the discoveries made by the alchemists were mainly the result of chance, and they were mostly ignorant charlatans; but although they had little method in their research, and a great deal of their knowledge was wrapped up in absurd and superstitious theories, when we look at the result of their discoveries up to the fifteenth century, the most prejudiced must admit that their labours were not spent entirely in vain. They demonstrated the existence of bismuth, liver of sulphur, and regulus of antimony, the distillation of alcohol, volatilisation of mercury, and preparation of aqua regia, sulphuric and other mineral acids, and the purification of alkalies. They had the scarlet dye for cloth, the secret of which has now been lost and cannot be equalled, and their processes of glass-staining cannot be approached by those employed at the present day. It is said that Eck, a German alchemist of Sultzbach, ascertained the existence of oxygen 300 years before it was demonstrated by Priestly. For these and other discoveries we have to thank the early alchemists.
During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries alchemy began to shake itself free from the wild theories and absurd practices which had impeded its progress. Henry VII. issued a severe edict against alchemical practices, which put a stop to the impositions of a number of charlatans. About this period John Baptist Porta discovered the means of reducing the metallic oxides and of colouring silver, and Isaac and Jean Hollandus made great improvements in enamelling, and demonstrated the manufacture of artificial gems.
From the time of Paracelsus and the introduction of printing, the science received a fresh impetus, and a new order of chemists came into being, whose conflict with the old order for many years is a matter of history.