Perhaps J. B. van Helmont (1577-1644) was the last distinguished investigator who professed actually to have changed mercury into gold, though impostors and mystics of various kinds continued to claim knowledge of the art long after his time. So late as 1782, James Price, an English physician, showed experiments with white and red powders, by the aid of which he was supposed to be able to transform fifty and sixty times as much mercury into silver and gold. The metals he produced are said to have proved genuine on assay; when, however, in the following year he was challenged to repeat the experiments he was unable to do so and committed suicide. In the course of the 19th century the idea that the different elements are constituted by different groupings or condensations of one primal matter--a speculation which, if proved to be well grounded, would imply the possibility of changing one element into another--found favour with more than one responsible chemist; but experimental research failed to yield any evidence that was generally regarded as offering any support to this hypothesis. About the beginning of the 20th century, however, the view was promulgated that the spontaneous production of helium from radium may be an instance of the transformation of one element into another. (See RADIOACTIVITY; also ELEMENT and MATTER.)
See
M. P. E. Berthelot, Les Origines de l'alchimie (1885)
Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs (text and
translation, 3 vols., 1887-1888)
Introduction a l'etude de
la chimie des anciens et du moyen age (1889): La Chimie au
moyen age (text and translation of Syriac and Arabic treatises
on alchemy, 3 vols., 1893).
Much bibliographical and other
information about the later writers on alchemy is contained
in Bibliotheca Chemica (2 vols., Glasgow, 1906), a catalogue
by John Ferguson of the books in the collection of James
Young of Kelly (printed for private distribution). (H. M. R.)
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