It is hardly necessary to state that a preparation of such potency is capable of effecting anything or everything; and accordingly, as time went on, other attributes than that of transmutation came to be associated with it. It may be, as Boerhaave surmises, that the idea of a universal medicine had its origin in a too literal interpretation of Geber’s allegory of the six lepers. Be this as it may, during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries the philosopher’s stone was gravely prescribed as a means of preserving health and prolonging life. In case of illness one grain was directed to be dissolved in a sufficient quantity of good white wine, contained in a silver vessel, the draught to be taken after midnight. Recovery would follow after an interval depending upon the severity and age of the complaint. To keep in good health, the dose was to be repeated at the beginning of spring and autumn. “By this means,” says Daniel Zacharias, “one may enjoy perfect health until the end of the days assigned to one.” Isaac of Holland and Basil Valentine are equally explicit, but in their case it is recommended that the dose should be taken once a month: thus life would be prolonged “until the supreme hour fixed by the king of heaven.” Other alchemists were not always so prudent in prophecy. Artephius gave the limit of human life thus prolonged as a thousand years; Gualdo, a Rosicrucian, was stated to have lived four hundred years. Raymond Lully and Salomon Trismosin, we are told, renewed their youth by means of it. The advanced age at which Noah begat children could only be due, says Vincent de Beauvais, to his use of the philosopher’s stone. Dickinson wrote a learned book to prove that the great age of the patriarchs was owing to the same secret.
But not only were health and length of days the fortunate lot of him who possessed the philosopher’s stone; increase of wisdom and virtue equally followed from its use. As it ennobled metals, so it freed the heart from evil. It made men as wise as Aristotle or Avicenna, sweetened adversity, banished vain-glory, ambition, and vicious desires. Adam received it at the hands of God, and it was given also to Solomon, although the commentators were rather exercised to know why, as he possessed the philosopher’s stone, he should have sent to Ophir for gold.
It would serve no good purpose to attempt to describe the recipes given by various alchemists to prepare this precious substance. With an affectation at times of precision, they were purposely obscure, and always enigmatical. As Boyle said of them, they could scarcely keep themselves from being confuted except by keeping themselves from being clearly understood. One example of their recipes must suffice: “To fix quicksilver.—Of several things take 2, 3 and 3, 1; 1 to 3 is 4; 3, 2 and 1. Between 4 and 3 there is 1; 3 from 4 is 1; then 1 and 1, 3 and 4; 1 from 3 is 2. Between 2 and 3 there is 1, between 3 and 2 there is 1. 1, 1, 1, and 1, 2, 2 and 1, 1 and 1 to 2. Then 1 is 1. I have told you all.” No wonder, after an equally luminous explication, a pupil of Arnaud de Villeneuve should have exclaimed: “But, master, I do not understand.” Upon which the master rejoined that he would be clearer another time.
Nor is it necessary to dilate upon the other virtues which were ascribed at various times to the philosophical powder, as, for example, its power of making pearls and precious stones, or of its use in preparing the alkahest, or universal solvent, invented by Paracelsus. In their attempts to fathom the depths of human credulity the alchemists at length over-reached themselves. The idea of a universal solvent carried with it, as Kunkel pointed out, its own refutation: if it dissolved everything, no vessel could contain it. And yet, says Boerhaave, a whole library could be filled with writings by the school of Paracelsus on the alkahest. From the latter end of the sixteenth century repeated attempts were made to expose the pretensions and demonstrate the absurdities of alchemy. Among its adversaries may be cited Thomas Erastius, Hermann Conringius, and the Jesuit Kircher. Many of their dupes, potentates and princes who were powerful enough to exercise it, occasionally visited with their vengeance those who, unmindful of the injunctions of Albert the Great, had traded too long upon their credulity. The Emperor Rudolph II., who earned the title of “The Hermes of Germany,” was a zealous cultivator of alchemy, and had a well-equipped laboratory in his palace at Prague, to which every adept was welcome. Ferdinand III. and Leopold I. were also patrons of the hermetic art, as were Frederick I. and his successor, Frederick II., Kings of Prussia. Indeed, at one period nearly every Court in Europe had its alchemist, with the privileges of the Court fool or the poet laureate. The fraud and imposture to which the practice gave rise led occasionally to the promulgation of stringent laws against it, and at times the pursuit of operative chemistry became well-nigh impossible in some countries. In the fifth year of the reign of Henry IV. (1404) it was enacted that “None from henceforth shall use to multiply gold or silver, or use the craft of multiplication; and if the same do he shall incur the pain of felony.” According to Watson, the true reason for passing this Act was not an apprehension that men should ruin their fortunes by endeavouring to make gold, but a jealousy lest Government should be above asking aid of the subject. At the same time, letters patent were granted to several persons, permitting them to investigate the universal medicine and perform the transmutation of metals.
Alphonse X., of Castille, the author of the Key of Wisdom, practised alchemy. Henry VI., of England, and Edward IV. had dealings with adepts. Even Elizabeth Tudor, who was a shrewd enough sovereign, had the notorious Dr. Dee in her pay. Charles VII. and Charles IX., of France, Christian IV., of Denmark, and Charles XII., of Sweden, sought to replenish their exhausted treasuries by the aid of the philosopher’s stone. If princes eventually learned not to put their trust in alchemists, alchemists learned equally to their cost not to put their trust in princes. Duke Julius, of Brunswick, in 1575, burnt a female alchemist, Marie Ziglerin, who had failed in her promise to furnish him with a prescription for the making of gold. David Benther killed himself to escape the fury of the Elector Augustus, of Saxony. Bragadino was hanged at Munich in 1590 by the Elector of Bavaria. Leonard Thurneysser, who gained an evil notoriety in his day as one of the most unscrupulous of the followers of Paracelsus, and who amassed considerable wealth by the sale of cosmetics and nostrums, was deprived of his ill-gotten gains in 1584 by the Elector of Brandenburg, and died in misery in the convent. Borri, a Milanese adventurer, who had deceived Frederick III., of Denmark, was imprisoned for years by that monarch, and died in captivity in 1695. William de Krohnemann was hanged by the Margrave of Byreuth, who, with grim irony, caused the inscription to be fixed to his gibbet: “I once knew how to fix mercury, and now I am myself fixed.” Hector de Klettenberg was beheaded in 1720 by Augustus II., King of Poland.
All the followers of Hermes were not so wary or so candid as the artist who declined an invitation to visit the Court of Rudolph II., saying: “If I am an adept, I have no need of the Emperor; if I am not, the Emperor has no need of me.” Well might John Clytemius, Abbot of Wiezenberg, write: “Vanitas, fraus, dolus, sophisticatio, cupiditas, falsitas, mendacium, stultitia, paupertas, desesperatio, fuga, proscriptio et mendicitas, perdisæque sunt chemiæ.”
Despite the attacks of Kunkel, Boerhaave, the elder Geoffroy, Klaproth, and other chemists of influence and repute, alchemy died hard. It found believers in England until near the close of the eighteenth century, and was professed even by a Fellow of the Royal Society—Dr. James Price, of Guildford, who, in chagrin at the exposure of his pretensions, put an end to his existence in 1783. Hermetic societies existed in Westphalia, at Königsberg, and at Carlsruhe down to the first decade of the nineteenth century. M. Chevreul, who lived well into that century, relates that he knew of several persons who were convinced of the truth of alchemy, among them “generals, doctors, magistrates, and ecclesiastics.” The strange medley of alchemy, theosophy, thaumaturgy, and cabalisticism professed by Christian Rosenkreuz is not without its adherents, even in this twentieth century.
If the baser metals have not been made to furnish gold, truth at least has followed from the practice of error. This is the only transmutation which the art of Hermes has succeeded in effecting. To err is human. Although alchemy is not without its special interest as one of the most remarkable aberrations in the history of science, some of its practitioners, it must be admitted, deceived only themselves: if misguided, they were at least honest, and pursued their calling in a settled conviction of the soundness of their faith. Although they never reached their goal—the discovery of the Philosopher’s Stone and the Elixir of Life—their labours were not wholly vain, for many new and unexpected facts came to light as the result of their assiduity.
“Credulity in arts and opinions,” wrote Lord Bacon in De Augmentis Scientiarum,
is likewise of two kinds—viz., when men give too much belief to arts themselves, or to certain authors in any art. The sciences that sway the imagination more than the reason are principally three—viz., astrology, natural magic, and alchemy.... Alchemy may be compared to the man who told his sons that he had left them gold, buried somewhere in his vineyard; while they by digging found no gold, but by turning up the mould about the roots of the vines procured a plentiful vintage. So the search and endeavours to make gold have brought many useful inventions of light.