THE GENEALOGY OF CHEMISTRY. 539 



as they were called, whence our word calamine. The fusion of these 

 minerals with those of copper produced alloys similar to our brass. 



While some of these compounds of copper, by virtue of the 

 importance of their applications, thus acquired special names, there 

 were others among the yellow alloys which, employed in antiquity 

 and the middle ages, have fallen into disuse; compounds of copper 

 with arsenic and antimony, for instance, which were useful for 

 promoting the combination of substances like iron with copper or 

 tin, which would not readily unite with them directly. Modern 

 chemistry has very little to do with such alloys. But an alloy of 

 copper and antimony has been revived and patented within the past 

 twenty years which has the appearance and many of the properties 

 of gold. It was known to the Greek alchemists, and is mentioned 

 in the Syriac translations of their works. There existed, therefore, 

 in antiquity and the middle ages, a multitude of artificial metals, pass- 

 ing under the general names of lead, iron, tin, electrum, and gold 

 and silver. Furthermore, as pure silver was confounded in gold- 

 smiths' practice with various alloys designated under the name of 

 asem, so the name of gold was not applied to pure gold alone, but 

 was extended to alloys of that substance with copper and other metals; 

 alloys which differed greatly in richness, but were used for making 

 base goods for which the goldsmiths tried to make their customers 

 pay the price of pure gold. These fraudulent practices and tricks 

 have continued down to our own time in countries where the law 

 has not fixed the standard of merchantable gold and silver with 

 severe penalties for violating it. 



With these facts before us we can easily comprehend the ideas 

 and theories of the alchemists, and imagine on what their practices 

 and hopes were based. One of the first ideas their experience gave 

 them was, doubtless, that the properties of the metals varied. The 

 theoretical definition of our simple bodies, which we now know 

 continue unchanged in nature and weight through the course of 

 their metamorphoses, was developed slowly, and was not recognized 

 as a certainty till within a century. The positive minds of the 

 Roman lawgivers no doubt perceived the necessity of employing 

 pure gold and silver, or alloys of a fixed standard, for coinage; but 

 this was a practical prescription, and not a scientific principle. 

 Although the artisans who worked these metals knew how to obtain 

 substances of legal purity, they had no sign to inform them whether 

 these substances really represented a single metal of unchangeable 

 quality, or whether they were dealing with a conventional stage in 

 the undefined series of transformations of matter. These legal 

 divisions applied to gold and silver. There is nothing to prove that 

 any one of the innumerable species of copper, lead, and tin repre- 



