by golden hopes, laboring with an industry and perseverance 

 in difficulties worthy of imitation, acquired great skill in 

 manipulation, becoming familiar with solution, crystallization, 

 and sublimation, as a means of purifying solids, with distilla- 

 tion of liquids, and particularly with all operations involving 

 the management of fire. 'By mixing all known chemicals in 

 divers ways and treating these mixtures in every conceivable 

 manner, though intelligent system was lacking, alchemists ob- 

 tained hundreds of substances, many of which became indis- 

 pensable agents in medicine, pharmacy, manufactures and 

 household economy. 



To enumerate the gifts of alchemy to chemical science 

 would necessitate chronicling the history of the latter for 

 centuries; before alchemists began their labors only seven 

 metals were recognized, and as there were seven days in the 

 week and seven planets, this branch of knowledge was thought 

 to be complete ; a Benedictine monk, however, working with 

 athanors and crucibles added bismuth and antimony, and 

 Paracelsus is credited with first recognizing zinc as a distinct 

 metal; more important than the recognition of a metallic 

 substance was the discovery of the preparation of the mineral 

 acids, whose power became known in alchemical days. 



While in search of the Philosophers' stone a poor shoe- 

 maker of Bologna, Vincentius Casciorolus by name, discovered 

 in 1602 the wonderful substance long known as the Bologna 

 stone, having the property of emitting phosphorescent light 

 in the dark; about seventy years later another disciple of 

 Hermes, a merchant of Hamburg named Brandt, obtained in 

 his retort the Phosphorus which possessed the same property 

 to a superlative degree; and ten years later Godfrey Hanck- 

 witz, a laboratory assistant to the eminent philosopher 

 Robert Boyle, himself a dabbler in alchemy, made with this 

 miracle-working phosphorus the first friction matches. A 



206 



