Alchemy, Page Five

Receipts given in the Leiden papyrus reappear in the Compositiones ad Tingenda and the Mappae Clavicula, both workshop receipt books, one known in an 8th-century MS. at Lucca, and the other in a 10th-century MS. in the library of Schlettstadt; and again in such works as the De Artibus Romanorum of Eraclius and the Schedula Diversarum Artium of Theophilus, belonging to the 11th or 12th century.

Theory of Transmutation.

The fundamental theory of the transmutation of metals is to be found in the Greek alchemists, although in details it was modified and elaborated by the Arabs and the Latin alchemists. Regarding all substances as being composed of one primitive matter--the prima materia, and as owing their specific differences to the presence of different qualities imposed upon it, the alchemist hoped, by taking away these qualities, to obtain the prima materia itself, and then to get from it the particular substance he desired by the addition of the appropriate qualities. The prima materia was early identified with mercury, not ordinary mercury, but the "mercury of the philosophers," which was the essence or soul of mercury, freed from the four Aristotelian elements--earth, air, fire and water--or rather from the qualities which they represent. Thus the operator had to remove from ordinary mercury, earth or an earthy principle or quality, and water or a liquid principle, and to fix it by taking away air or a volatile principle. The prima materia thus obtained had to be treated with sulphur (or with sulphur and arsenic) to confer upon it the desired qualities that were missing. This sulphur again was not ordinary sulphur, but some principle derived from it, which constituted the philosopher's stone or elixir--white for silver and yellow or red for gold. This is briefly the doctrine that the metals are composed of mercury and sulphur, which persisted in one form or another down to the 17th century. Of course there were numerous variations and refinements. Thus in the Speculum Naturale of Vincent of Beauvais (c. 1250) it is said that there are four spirits--mercury, sulphur, arsenic and sal ammoniac-- and six bodies--gold, silver, copper, tin, lead and iron.³ Of these bodies the two first are pure, the four last impure. Pure white mercury, fixed by the virtue of white non-corrosive sulphur, engenders in mines a matter which fusion changes into silver, and united to pure clear red sulphur it forms gold, while with various kinds of impure mercury and sulphur the other bodies are produced. Vincent attributes to Rhazes the statement that copper is potentially silver, and any one who can eliminate the red colour will bring it to the state of silver, for it is copper in outward appearance, but in its inmost nature silver. This statement represents a doctrine widely held in the 13th century, and also to be found in the Greek alchemists, that everything endowed with a particular apparent quality possesses a hidden opposite quality, which can be rendered apparent by fire. Later, as in the works attributed to Basil Valentine, sulphur, mercury and salt are held to be the constituents of the metals.

Note
³ Cf. Chaucer, Chanouns Yemannes Tale, where, however, mercury figures both as a spirit and a body:--

"The firste spirit quik-silver called is,
The second orpiment, the thridde ywis
Sal armoniak, and the ferthe brimstoon."

Continued on page six.