[70] Alcahest, in chemistry, (an obsolete term,) means a most pure and universal menstruum or dissolvent, with which some chemists have pretended to resolve all bodies into their first elements, and perform other extraordinary and unaccountable operations.
[71] In this writer 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." He also tells us that he was "wont to call himself a gold-melter and a chemist."
[72] The principal Authors on alchymy are Geber, the Arab, Friar Bacon, Sully, John and Isaac Hallendus, Basil Valentine, Paracelsus, Van Zuchter, and Sendirogius.
[73] Corringius calls this statement in question, and asks how Suidas, who lived but five hundred yours between them, should know what happened eight hundred years before him? To which Borrichius the Dane, answers, that he had learnt it of Eudemus, Helladius, Zozimus, Pamphilius, and others, as Suidas himself relates.
[74] It does not appear that the Egyptians transmuted 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, adds Kercher, these secrets were never written down, or made public, but confined to the royal family, and handed down traditionally from father to son.
CHAPTER IX.
ALCHYMICAL AND ASTROLOGICAL CHIMERA.
Having so far explained the fragile basis on which human knowledge may be said to have depended, during the obscurity and barbarity of the middle ages, when the progress of true knowledge was obstructed by the most absurd fancies, and puerile conceits: when conjectures, caprices, and dreams supplied the place of the most useful sciences, and of the most important truths, the subsequent illustrative reflections may serve as a guide to direct the attention of the reader to other delusions, which arose out of the general chaos.
Chemistry, a science so essentially requisite to explain the phenomena of known and unknown substances, was studied chiefly by jugglers and fanatics;—their systems, replete with metaphysical nonsense, and composed of the most crude and heterogeneous materials, served rather to nourish superstition than to establish facts, and illustrate useful truths. Universal remedies, in various forms, met with strenuous advocates and deluded consumers. The path of accurate observation and experiment was forsaken: instead of penetrating into the mysterious recesses of nature, they bewildered themselves in the labyrinth of fanciful speculation; they overstepped the bounds of good sense, modesty, and truth; and the blind led the blind. The prolongation of life too was no longer sought for in a manner agreeable to the dictates of nature; even this interesting branch of human pursuits was rendered subservient to chemistry, or rather to the confused system of alchymy. Original matter was considered as the elementary cause of all beings, by which they expected literally to work miracles, to transmute the base into noble metals, to metamorphose man in his animal state by chemical processes, to render him more durable, and to secure him against early decline and dissolution. Millions of vessels, retorts, and phials, were either exposed to the action of the most violent artificial heat, or to the natural warmth of the sun; or else they were buried in some dunghill or other fetid mass, for the purpose of attracting this original matter, or obtaining it from putrescible substances.
As the metal called gold always bore the highest value, these crude philosophers concluded, from a ridiculous analogy, that its value with respect to the preservation of health and the cure of diseases, must likewise surpass that of all other remedies. The nugatory art of dissolving it, so as to render it potable, and to prevent it from again being converted into metal, employed a multitude of busy idiots, not only in concealed corners, but in the splendid laboratories of the great. Sovereigns, magistrates, counsellors, and impostors, struck with the common frenzy, entered into friendship and alliance, formed private fraternities, and sometimes proceeded to such a pitch of extravagance, as to involve themselves and their posterity in ruinous debts. The real object of many was, doubtless, to gratify their avarice and desire of aggrandisement: although this sinister motive was concealed under the specious pretext of searching for a remedy that should serve as a tincture of life, both for the healthy and diseased, yet some among these whimsical mortals were actuated by more honourable motives, zealous only for the interest of truth, and the well-being of their fellow creatures.