PRESIDENTS ADDRESS—SECTION B. 49 
The history of chemistry during the middle ages becomes the 
history of alchemy, the search for the philosopher’s stone, the 
universal solvent, the elixir of life, and similar fanciful toys. 
As far as progress in chemical science is concerned, these 1000 
years are almost absolutely barren of result, and it is quite out- 
side the scope of this address to do more than note this period 
as a landmark in the history of chemistry—a landmark, one must 
admit, whose absence would not have delayed the advance of 
knowledge. 
The period is, however, one of fascination and interest to the 
student on account of the intense enthusiasm of the workers, 
their pathetic self-sacrifice, and the atmosphere of glamour in 
which their lives were enveloped, both by the mysterious nature 
of the work on which they were engaged, and the fanciful and 
imaginative nature of their writings. For, although in the 
latter days alchemy degenerated into the merest charlatanry and 
deceit, the alchemists for the most part spared neither labour 
nor fortune to attain their object, which appeared always so 
near fulfilment, and so tantalisingly elusive. They worked, 
moreover, in continual danger of their lives. 
They were suspected of being magic.ans, trafficking in for- 
bidden lore, and in league with the enemy of mankind, and in 
those days the punishment of such was summary. The pro- 
mulgation of a Papal Bull early in the 14th century denouncing 
alchemy, and forbidding its practice, made the way of perse- 
cutors particularly easy and profitable. If the unfortunate 
alchemist escaped punishment at the hands of his enemies, he 
was almost certain to fall into the hands of equally dangerous 
friends, for in those days, as now, princes and rulers suffered 
from a chronic lack of ready money, and it was the custom with 
most of the powerful Continental barons to keep en alchemist 
immured in their castle, with instructions to manufacture the 
necessary gold under the most frightful pains and penalties. 
The lives of some of the alchemists read in consequence like 
the pages of a romance. 
It is therefore not altogether to be wondered at that the later 
alchemists degenerated into tricksters and mountebanks, but it 
is certain that many of them were workers of great ability and 
enthusiasm, and, however absurd we may regard their strivings, 
and however fanciful and ridiculous the language they used to 
describe their operations, we nevertheless owe them a debt of 
eratitude, for they amassed an astonishing number of facts 
which succeeding chemists have availed themselves of. We owe 
them a large number of chemical preparations and apparatus, 
and they were the only followers of experimental science during 
the period fitly known as the Dark Ages. 
Those who escaped violent and tragic deaths were for the 
most part monks, who carried on their work in the quiet 
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