THE 



QUARTERLY JOURNAL, 



July, 1820. 



Art. I. A Sketch of the History of Alchymif. By W. T. 

 Brande, Sec. R.S., and Prof. Chem. R.I. 



XHE materials composing the history of alchymy being scattered 

 through a variety of obscure publications, many of which are 

 scarce, and others not frequently found in our libraries, it is 

 presumed that the following account of some of their principal 

 contents may not be wholly unacceptable to our readers, more 

 especially as they are frequently alluded to by the chemical 

 writers of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, whose works 

 may occasionally be consulted with advantage, though the 

 authors they quote are scarcely worth the trouble of perusal. 



The transmutation of baser metals into gold was not only 

 regarded as possible, but believed to have been performed, by 

 some of the more enlightened chemists of the seventeenth cen- 

 tury ; and in perusing the history of some of these transmuta- 

 tions, as recorded by Hclvetius, Boerhaave, Boyle, and other 

 sober-minded men, it would be impossible to resist the evidence 

 adduced, without the aids of modern science. Lord Bacon's 

 sound sense has been arraigned for his belief in alchymy, though 

 he in fact rather urges the possibility than the probability of 

 transmutation ; and considering the infant state of the experi- 

 mental sciences, and of chemistry in particular, in his age, 

 and the plausible exterior of the phenomena that the chemists 

 were able to produce, he is rather to be considered as sceptical 

 than credulous, upon many of the points which he discusses. 



IlERMiis TuisMKdisTus has generally been quoted as the 

 Vol. IX. P 



