We find the word Alchymy occurring, for the first time, in Julius Firmicus Maternus, an author who lived under Constantine the Great, who in his Mathesis, iii. 35, speaking of the influence of the heavenly bodies, affirms, “that if the Moon be in the house of Saturn, at the time a child is born, he shall be skilled in Alchymy.”
The great objects or ends pursued by Alchymy, are, 1st, To make gold; which is attempted by separation, maturation; and by transmutation, which is to be effected by means of the Philosopher’s stone. With a view to this end, Alchymy, in some writers, is also called ποιητκη, poetice, and χρυσοποιητικη, chryso poetice, i. e. the art of making gold; and hence also, by a similar derivation, the artists themselves are called gold-makers.
2d. An universal medicine, adequate to all diseases.
3d. An universal dissolvent or alkahest. (See Alkahest.)
4. An universal ferment, or a matter, which being applied to any seed, shall increase its fecundity to infinity. If, for example, it be applied to gold, it shall change the gold into the philosopher’s stone of gold,—if to silver, into the philosopher’s stone of silver,—and if to a tree, the result is, the philosopher’s stone of the tree; which transmutes every thing it is applied to, into trees.
The origin and antiquity of Alchymy have been much controverted. If we may credit legend and tradition, it must be as old as the flood; nay, Adam himself, is represented by the Alchymist, as an adept. A great part, not only of the heathen mythology, but of the Jewish and Christian Revelations, are supposed to refer to it. Thus Suidas will have the fable of the Philosopher’s Stone, to be alluded to in the fable of the Argonauts; and others find it in the book of Moses, &c. But if the æra of the art be examined by the monument of history, it will lose much of this fancied antiquity. The learned Dane, Borrichius, has taken immense pains to prove that it was not unknown to the ancient Greeks and Egyptians. Crounguis, on the contrary, with equal address, undertakes to show its novelty. Still not one of the ancient poets, philosophers, or physicians, from the time of Homer till four hundred years after the birth of Christ, mention any thing about it.
The first author who speaks of making gold, is Zosimus the Pomopolite, who lived about the beginning of the fifth century, and who has a treatise express upon it, called, “the divine art of making gold and silver,” in manuscript, and is, as formerly, in the King of France’s library. The next is Æneas Gazeus, another Greek writer, towards the close of the same century, in whom we find the following passage:—“Such as are skilled in the ways of nature, can take silver and tin, and changing their nature, can turn them into gold.” The same writer tells us, that he was “wont to call himself χρυσοχοος, gold melter, and χημευτης, chemist.” Hence we may conclude, that a notion of some such art as Alchymy was in being at that age; but as neither of these artists inform us how long it had been previously known, their testimony will not carry us back beyond the age in which they lived.
In fact, we find no earlier or plainer traces of the universal medicine mentioned any where else; nor among the physicians and naturalists, from Moses to Geber the Arab, who is supposed to have lived in the seventh century. In that author’s work, entitled the “Philosopher’s Stone,” mention is made of a medicine that cures all leprous diseases. This passage, some authors suppose, to have given the first hint of the matter; though Geber himself, perhaps, meant no such thing; for by attending to the Arabic style and diction of this author, which abounds in allegory, it is highly probable, that by man he means gold; and by leprous, or other diseases, the other metals; which, with relation to gold, are all impure.
The manner in which Suidas accounts for this total silence of old authors with regard to Alchymy, is, that Dioclesian procured all the books of the ancient Egyptians to be burnt; and that it was in these that the great mysteries of chymistry were contained. Corringius calls this statement in question, and asks how Suidas, who lived but five hundred years before us, should know what happened eight hundred years before him? To which Borrichius answers, that he had learnt it of Eudemus, Helladius, Zosimus, Pamphilius, &c. as Suidas himself relates.
Kercher asserts, that the theory of the Philosopher’s Stone, is delivered at large in the table of Hermes, and that the ancient Egyptians were not ignorant of the art, but declined to prosecute it. They did not appear to transmute gold; they had ways of separating it from all kinds of bodies, from the very mud of the Nile, and stones of all kinds: but, he adds, these secrets were never written down, or made public, but confined to the royal family, and handed down traditionally from father to son.