Galen as an alchemist
As for Galen, a Commentary of Galen upon Hermes’ Book of Secrets[2470] turns out to be an alchemy of the incoherent and mystical variety. A Practice in the Secrets of Secrets of Nature ascribed to him is obviously spurious, since it opens by citing Geber. It is accompanied by a Theorica.[2471] Indeed, the Practica is really the same as the treatise usually ascribed to Archelaus.[2472] There was perhaps a medieval alchemist named Galen, since a manuscript at Paris states that “Master Galienus the writer who is used in the episcopate is an alchemist and knows how to whiten eramen so that it is as white as ordinary silver.”[2473]
The Eighty-eight Natural Experiments of Rasis.
The Eighty-eight Natural Experiments of Rasis[2474] are not medical but a series of magic tricks and chemical experiments. Yet they are not only ascribed to Rasis, or at least are said to be a selection from a larger work of his recently translated from Arabic into Latin at Toledo,[2475] but the translator seems to be the same mysterious Ferrarius[2476] of the Experimental Medicines, while the opening words[2477] are very similar to those of the Secrets of Galen which Gerard of Cremona is supposed to have translated, except that here we read, “You have asked me, friend Anselm” instead of Monteus.[2478] Only fragments of the treatise seem to be extant but enough of the eighty-eight experiments are preserved to illustrate their character. Serpents are assembled at a given spot by placing a snake in a perforated pot about which a slow fire is built in order to make him hiss and attract his kind. Fish are made to congregate similarly beneath the surface of a river by letting down into the water at night a lighted lantern with glass windows in its four sides.[2479] The property of alcohol (aqua ardens) of burning on the tip of a finger or from a cloth which has been dipped in it without consuming the cloth or burning the finger is termed magical. To cook an egg in cold water, it is placed in quick-lime in a vessel, then cold water is poured in and the vessel tightly closed. Other experiments are to make a ring hop about the house like a locust, to carry live coals without injury, to light a candle from the rays of the sun, to blacken the face completely. More useful seem those experiments which consist in making alcohol, turpentine, or Greek fire.
Liber ignium of Marcus Grecus.
Following the three experiments just mentioned, in both the manuscripts of the Eighty-eight Natural Experiments which we have just been describing, comes The Book of Fires for Burning Enemies of Marcus Grecus.[2480] Since it is also found in other manuscripts,[2481] it would appear to be a distinct treatise from the Eighty-eight Natural Experiments, although its form is similar. Berthelot already has been impressed by the close association in this treatise of “purely scientific compounds of combustible or phosphorescent substances and the preparations of prestidigitateurs and magicians.”[2482] For instance, in an effort to make an inextinguishable fire glow-worms are pulverized and mixed with other substances and then warmed for a certain number of days in horse manure.[2483] A lamp that will shed a silvery light on everything in the house is obtained by smearing the wick with a liquid similar to quicksilver supposed to be obtained by cutting off a lizard’s tail.[2484] Or everything around will appear green, if the brain of a bird is wrapped in cloth and burned with olive oil on a green stone. If the hands are rubbed with an Indian nut or chestnut and “water of camphor,” a candle may be extinguished by opening them above it and relighted by closing the hands.[2485] Other ointments are said to keep one from being burned by a flame or by the red-hot iron in the ordeal.[2486] More scientific are the recipes for oil of sulphur, gunpowder, Greek fire, alcohol.[2487] Two of the more fantastic experiments are said to have been discovered by Aristotle for Alexander,[2488] and another cites Hermes and Ptolemy for its “prodigious and marvelous works.”[2489] The reader will have noticed the recurrence of some of the matters treated in the Natural Experiments of Rasis. Such repetitions and resemblances are common in the medieval collections of recipes and experiments.
Further experiments.
At the close of the Book of Fires of Marcus Grecus, in one of the two manuscripts[2490] where it follows the Eighty-eight Natural Experiments of Rasis, the listing of experiments of the same sort continues without any new title and the consecutive numbering of them in the margin goes on up to one hundred and forty-four in all. It is doubtful, however, how far we may regard these additional experiments as a resumption of the text of Rasis, which had been interrupted by the work of Marcus Grecus, since we cannot arrive at an even number of eighty-eight experiments by any combination. These additional experiments instruct us how to paint an image on the wall from which a candle may be lighted, how to write letters that cannot be read unless the material upon which they are written is placed near a fire or touched with a rod, how to make cooked meat seem raw and wormy.[2491] This trick, which is found frequently in medieval manuscripts, is performed by making mince meat of the heart or dried blood of some animal and strewing the particles upon the piece of cooked flesh, whose heat will make them move like worms, while their color is that of raw meat. We are also instructed how to cook meat of a sudden, how to turn a red rose white—apparently by fumigating it with sulphur, and how to make “marvelous bottles” (ad faciendum ampullas mirabiles)—the directions seem to tell how to blow soap bubbles.[2492] How to emit fire from the mouth, to heat a bath, to construct an artificial mill in a camp, and to make all the bystanders appear headless.[2493] A score of experiments are concerned with colors and dyes.[2494] To make a dog follow you, place a piece of bread and butter under your armpit, “that it may receive the odor of the sweat,” and then feed it to the dog.[2495] A magical experiment to deprive a man of his urine consists in taking urine and earth on which someone has made water and enclosing them together in the skin of a camel’s womb or a dog’s paw; “and he will have no urine as long as the earth is enclosed in the skin.”[2496] The last experiment, “that a wife may live a good life with her husband,” involves writing an incantation upon parchment.[2497]
The Secretum Philosophorum.
Found together with the Eighty-eight Natural Experiments of Rasis in one of the two manuscripts[2498] containing that work, and in other manuscripts together with the Liber ignium[2499] and Liber Vaccae[2500] and Experiments or Secrets of Albert,[2501] is an anonymous work entitled The Secret of the Philosophers. As it seems to be found especially in English libraries,[2502] and mainly in manuscripts of the fourteenth century,[2503] it was perhaps composed in England in the thirteenth century. At any rate it claims no connection with Galen or Rasis. It is longer than most medieval collections of experiments and subdivides into seven sections, each named after one of the liberal arts.