1893.] NEW YORK ACADEMY OF SCIENCES. 131 



In an interior view of a laboratory of the fifteenth century, 

 by Vriese, very sumptuous appointments are seen ; a lofty room 

 with tiled floor, furnaces on the right under an overhauging 

 hood, an altar on the left before which the alchemist prays on 

 his knees, in the centre a table covered with aj^paratus, books, 

 and musical instruments, in the foreground an alembic, over- 

 head a lamp swinging from a ceiled roof. The whole indicates 

 wealth and luxury contrasting strongly with later pictures of 

 the laboratories of impoverished alchemists. 



The interior of workshops of alchemists of the sixteenth 

 century have been artistically painted by the celebrated Flemish 

 artist David Teniers. Of these interiors I am acquainted with 

 six different styles, having, however, many features in commou. 



The alchemists, influenced by the atmosphere of mystical 

 associations prevailing in astrology and the black art, affected 

 fanciful names for pieces of apparatus bearing accidental 

 resemblance to objects in nature ; the body of an alembic was 

 a "cucurbit " or gourd ; an alembic-head without a beak was a 

 "blind alembic"; if the beak was joined to the body so as to 

 make a circulatory apparatus, it was a "pelican," owing to its 

 outline resemblance to this bird ; two alembics joined by beaks 

 were "twins "; a flask with a very long neck was a " bolt-head "; 

 a flask with its neck closed before the blowpipe was a " philoso- 

 phic egg." Again, the cucurbit surmounted by the alembic- 

 head was symbolically called " homo galeatus," a man wearing 

 a helmet. 



A special form of furnace much extolled for alchemical 

 operations was an " athanor," deathless, because the fire could 

 be maintained indefinitely. The residuum of any distillation 

 was a " caput mortuum," death's head. A cone-shaped bag for 

 filtering was early known as "Hippocrates' sleeve"; the 

 oi^erating of closing a flask by fusing the neck was applying 

 the "seal of Hermes"; fusing of two metals was their 

 "marriage." A still more extravagant nomenclature was 

 applied to chemical substances themselves, but of these and of 

 the characters employed to designate them I have already 

 addressed the Academy (December 11, 188'2, and March 12, 

 1883). A single example will suffice. Basil Valentine wrote : 

 " The greater the quantity of the eagle opposed to the lion the 

 shorter the combat ; torment the lion until he is weary and 

 desires death. Make as much of eagle until it weeps, collect 

 the tears and the blood of the lion and mix them in the 

 philosophical vase," That is to say : " Dissolve the substance 

 and volatilize it." 



In Iheronimus Brunschwick's Liber de arte distillandi comj)ositis 



