In England, after the true scientific spirit had been brought to bear on such inquiries by Robert Boyle and the founders of the Royal Society in the later years of the seventeenth century, little was heard of “alchemy,” and the word “chemistry” took its place, signifying a new method of study in which the actual properties of bodies, their combinations and decompositions, were carefully ascertained and recorded without any prepossessions as to either the mythical philosopher’s stone or the elixir of life. But as late as 1783—only a hundred and twenty-five years ago—we come across a strange and tragic history in the records of the Royal Society associated with the name of James Price, who was a gentleman commoner of Magdalen Hall, Oxford. After graduating as M.A., in 1777 he was, at the age of twenty-nine, elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London. In the following year the University of Oxford conferred on him the degree of M.D. in recognition of his discoveries in natural science, and especially for his chemical labours. Price was born in London in 1752, and his name was originally Higginbotham, but he changed it on receiving a fortune from a relative.
This fortunate young man, whose abilities and character impressed and interested the learned men of the day, provided himself with a laboratory at his country house at Stoke, near Guildford. Here he carried on his researches, and the year after that in which honours were conferred on him by his university and the great scientific society in London, he invited a number of noblemen and gentlemen to his laboratory to witness the performance of seven experiments, similar to those of the alchemists—namely, the transmutation of baser metals into silver and into gold. The Lords Onslow, Palmerston, and King of that date were amongst the company. Price produced a white powder, which he declared to be capable of converting fifty times its own weight of mercury into silver, and a red powder, which, he said, was capable of converting sixty times its own weight of mercury into gold. The preparation of these powders was a secret, and it was the discovery of them for which Price claimed attention. The experiments were made. In seven successive trials the powders were mixed in a crucible with mercury, first four crucibles, with weighed quantities of the white powder, and then three other crucibles with weighed quantities of the red powder. Silver and gold appeared in the crucibles after heating in a furnace, as predicted by Price. The precious metal produced was examined by assayers and pronounced genuine. Specimens of the gold were exhibited to his Majesty King George III., and Price published a pamphlet entitled “An Account of Some Experiments, &c.,” in which he repudiated the doctrine of the philosopher’s stone, but claimed that he had, by laborious experiment, discovered how to prepare these composite powders, which were the practical realisation of that long-sought marvel. He did not, however, reveal the secret of their preparation. The greatest excitement was caused by this publication appearing under the name of James Price, M.D. (Oxon.), F.R.S. It was translated into foreign languages, and caused a tremendous commotion in the scientific world.
Some of the older Fellows of the Royal Society, friends of Price, now urged him privately to make known his mode of preparing the powders, and pointed out the propriety of his bringing his discovery before the society. But this Price refused to do. To one of his friends he wrote that he feared he might have been deceived by the dealers who had sold mercury to him, and that apparently it already contained gold. He was urged by two leading Fellows of the society to repeat his experiments in their presence, and he thereupon wrote that the powders were exhausted, and that the expense of making more was too great for him to bear, whilst the labour involved had already affected his health, and he feared to submit it to a further strain. The Royal Society now interfered, and the president (Sir Joseph Banks) and officers insisted that, “for the honour of the society,” he must repeat the experiments before delegates of the society, and show that his statements were truthful and his experiments without fraud.
Under this pressure the unhappy Dr. Price consented to repeat the experiments. He undertook to prepare in six weeks ten powders similar to those which he had used in his public demonstration. He appears to have been in a desperate state of mind, knowing that he could not expect to deceive the experts of the society. He hastily studied the works of some of the German alchemists as a forlorn hope, trusting that he might chance upon a successful method in their writings. He also prepared a bottle of laurel water, a deadly poison. Three Fellows of the Royal Society came on the appointed day, in August, 1783, to the laboratory, near Guildford. It is related (I hope it is not true) that one of them visited the laboratory the day before the trial, and, having obtained entrance by bribing the housekeeper in Price’s absence, discovered that his crucibles had false bottoms and recesses in which gold or silver could be hidden before the quicksilver and powder were introduced. Dr. Price appears to have received his visitors, but whether he commenced the test experiments in their presence or not does not appear. When they were solemnly assembled in the laboratory he quietly drank a tumblerful of the laurel water (hydrocyanic acid), which he had prepared, and fell dead before them. He left a fortune of £12,000 in the Funds. It has been discussed whether Dr. Price was a madman or an impostor. Probably vanity led him on to the course of deception which ended in this tragic way. He could not bring himself to confess failure or deception, nor to abscond. He ended his trouble by suicide. He was only thirty-one years of age! Not inappropriately he has been called the “Last of the Alchemists,” though a long interval of time separates him from the last but one and the days when the old traditions of the Arabians’ al-chemy were really treasured and the mystic art still practised.
33. A Story of Sham Diamonds and Pearls
It has been recently declared by a dealer in precious stones that though diamonds and other stones can be very well imitated, yet pearls cannot be. This is hardly correct, as artificial pearls so well made as to defy detection by the casual glance of any but a professional expert are common enough. Who does not know the pathetic story by the greatest of French writers, Guy de Maupassant, of the wife of a poor Government clerk, who borrowed a necklace from another lady to wear at a reception at the “Ministry”? She lost the necklace (I forget whether it was of pearls or of diamonds, or both); but she and her husband were too proud to confess the fact, and purchased another necklace exactly like the lost one, for a sum the outlay of which reduced them for the rest of their lives to a state of penury and social exile. They returned the new necklace in place of the lost one without a word, and accepted their fate. By chance, the poor ruined lady, fifteen years afterwards, met her old friend, who had long since passed from her acquaintance, together with other prosperous people. Moved by her former friend’s kind reception, she related the true history of the pearl necklace of long ago. “Great heavens!” exclaimed the prosperous lady. “The necklace I lent you was made with imitation gems! It was not worth five pounds!” Too late! Nothing now could give back to the high-minded, self-respecting little couple the lost years of youth passed in privation and bitterness.
34. The Nature of Pearls
Pearls have been lately studied by zoologists, and their true history made known. They are a disease, caused, like so many other diseases, by an infecting parasite. It is common knowledge that they are found much as we see them in jewellery, as little lustrous spheres embedded in the soft bodies of various shellfish, such as mussels, oysters, and even some kinds of whelks. They are not found in the shellfish like crabs and lobsters, called Crustacea, but only in those like snails, clams and oysters, called Mollusca. Pink pearls are found in some kinds of pink-shelled whelks. A pearl-mussel or pearl-oyster has a pearly lining to its shell, which is always being laid down layer by layer by the surface of the mussel’s or oyster’s body, where it rests in contact with the shell, which consequently increases in thickness. If a grain of sand or a little fish gets in between the shell and the soft body of its maker, it rapidly is coated over with a layer of pearl, and so a pearly boss or lump is produced, projecting on the inner face of the shell, and forming part of it. These are called “blister-pearls,” and are very beautiful, though of little value, since they are not complete all round, but merely knobs of the general “mother-of-pearl” surface. These blister-pearls can be produced artificially by introducing a hard body between the shell and the living oyster or mussel.
It used to be thought that the true spherical pearls were caused by a hard granule of some kind pressing its way into the soft substance of the shell-fish, pushing a layer of the pearl-producing surface like a pocket in front of it. But it is now known that this “pushing in” is the work, not of an inanimate granule, but of a minute parasitic worm, which becomes thus enclosed by a pocket of the outer skin. The pocket closes up at its neck, and lays down layer after layer of pearl substance around the intrusive parasite, the dead remains of which can be detected with the microscope in sections of the pearl forming there a central kernel or nucleus. These parasitic worms were first detected in the small pearls formed by the common edible sea-mussel.
Though they are very small, sea-mussel pearls are collected for the market at Conway, in North Wales, and also on the coast of France. The parasitic worm is the young of a worm which, when adult, lives in the intestine of carnivorous fishes. It appears that it has to pass from and with the mussel into shellfish-eating sea fishes, where, although the mussel is digested, the parasite is not, but grows in size and alters its shape considerably. Then after a time the worm is swallowed, with the fish in which it has fixed itself, by sharks, dogfish, and such fish-eating fishes. In these at last it becomes adult and of some size, an inch or so long, varying according to the particular kind, and produces many thousands of eggs, which hatch out as minute creatures swimming in the sea-water, and fortunate if they fall upon a bed of mussels. They enter the mussel’s shell and make their way into its soft substance. A certain number (very few) get encased in the skin and covered up by pearl-layers, which is the mussel’s way of killing them and putting them out of mischief. The others which have entered other regions of the mussel’s body thrive, and have a chance of being swallowed by a mussel-eating fish, and then a further chance of that fish being eaten by a shark. If this happens the lucky worm—like the Italian who gets a winning number in three successive drawings of a lottery—gains the big prize. He becomes adult and produces innumerable young, who in their turn enter upon the chanceful career of a mussel parasite.