Other notable names in the history of Arabian alchemy are Rhazes, or Abû Bakr Mohammed ibn Zakaráyá el-Rázi, who lived circa 925, and Avicenna, or in Arabic Abû Ali el-Hosein ibn-Abdallah ibn-Sina, born 980, died 1037. The former, a Persian, practised medicine at Baghdad as a follower of Galen and Hippocrates. The latter, one of the most eminent of Moslem physicians and a voluminous writer, was a native of Bokhara. He is mainly known in the history of science by his Canon of Medicine, in which he describes the composition and preparation of remedies. He wrote at least one treatise on alchemy, but others attributed to him are probably apocryphal. Of his Philosophia Orientalis, mentioned by Roger Bacon and Averroes, no trace remains.
Although it is reasonably certain that the alchemists of the time of Geber and of his successors had a considerable acquaintance with manipulative chemistry, there were so many impudent literary forgeries during the alchemical period that the precise extent of the knowledge possessed by the early chemists must always remain uncertain.
A number of the ordinary chemical processes, such as distillation, sublimation, calcination, filtration, appear to have been known to, and to have been commonly practised by, the Arabian chemists; and many saline substances, such as carbonate of soda, pearlash, sal-ammoniac, alum, copperas, borax, silver nitrate, cinnabar, and corrosive sublimate, were prepared by them. They seem to have known of certain of the mineral acids, and were familiar with the solvent properties of aqua regia.
An examination of the literature of alchemy serves to show how its principles and tenets developed. The philosopher’s stone is first heard of in the twelfth century. Prior to that period the greater number of the Greek and Arabian writers contented themselves with affirming the fact of transmutation, without indicating how it might be accomplished. The universal medicine and the elixir of life were the products of a later age; no mention of them is known before the thirteenth century.
Alchemy flourished vigorously during the Middle Ages, and lingered on even until the early part of the nineteenth century. Its history is simply a long chapter in the history of human credulity. For the most part it is a record of self-deception, imposture, and fraud. It produced an abundant literature, mainly the work of ecclesiastics, between the seventh and fourteenth centuries; but as regards the artificial preparation of the noble metals or the discovery of the universal medicine or the elixir of life it was barren of result.
Although no clear line of demarcation is possible, it may be convenient, in dealing with the personal history of alchemy, to divide it into the two periods before and after Paracelsus, since under his inspiration and example alchemy underwent a great development as regards its professed objects. These eventually became so extravagant that, wide as are the limits of human credulity, its pretensions gradually brought it into disrepute, and it fell by the weight of its own absurdities.
One of the most reputable of the early Western alchemists was Albert Groot, or Albertus Magnus, born at Lauingen in 1193. He was a Dominican monk, who became Bishop of Regensburg, but, resigning his bishopric, retired to a convent at Cologne, where he devoted himself to science until his death in 1282. He is credited with having written a number of chemical tracts, for the most part in clear and intelligible language, which is more than can be said of the greater portion of alchemistical literature. He gives an account of the origin and main properties of the chemical substances known in his time, and describes the apparatus and processes used by chemists, such as the water-bath, alembics, aludels, and cupels. He speaks of cream of tartar, alum and caustic alkali, red lead, liver of sulphur and arsenic, green vitriol and iron pyrites.
Contemporaneously with him was Roger Bacon, Doctor Mirabilis, one of the most erudite men of his age, who was born near Ilchester in Somerset in 1214, and, after studying at Oxford, became a friar, occupied himself in philosophical pursuits, and wrote numerous tracts on alchemy. He describes what was probably gunpowder, but there is no certain proof that he invented it. In his De Secretis Artis et Naturæ, written before 1249, he gives instructions for refining saltpetre, and in an anagram which Colonel Hime, in his Gunpowder and Ammunition, has interpreted, he states that a mixture “which will produce a thundering noise and a bright flash” may be made by taking “7 parts of saltpetre, 5 of young hazel wood, and 5 of sulphur.” He died in 1285.
Raymund Lully, a friend and scholar of Bacon, was born in Majorca in 1225 (others say 1235), and was buried there in 1315. A member of the Order of Minorites, he had a great reputation as an alchemist; and a number of books on alchemy and chemical processes are ascribed to him. He described modes of obtaining nitric acid and aqua regia, and studied their action upon metals. He obtained alcohol by distillation, and knew how to dehydrate it by the aid of carbonate of potash, which he obtained by calcining cream of tartar. He prepared various tinctures and essential oils, and a number of metallic compounds, such as red and white precipitate. To him is usually ascribed the first idea of a universal medicine.
There is some difficulty in believing that all that is ascribed to Lully was actually the work of his age, for it would appear to have been a common practice with the disciples and followers of a notable scholar to usher in their performances under their master’s name—a practice not unknown in later days. “So full are they of the experiments and observations which occur in our later writers that either the books must be suppositious, or the ancient chemists must have been acquainted with a world of things which pass for the discoveries of modern practice” (Boerhaave). The story is that Lully plunged into the study of chemistry from the desire to cure a maiden of a cancered breast, and that he was stoned to death in Africa, whither he had journeyed as a missionary. It has been further alleged that at one period of his life he made gold in the Tower of London by the King’s order, and that he offered Edward III. a supply of six millions to make war against the infidels. As Boerhaave drily remarks, “the history of this eminent adept is very much imbroiled.”