THE EARLY DAYS OF CHEMISTRY 7 



these, when still more compressed, comes flowing water ; 

 and from water come earth and stones once more; and 

 thus generation seems to be transmitted from one to the 

 other in a circle.' 



Aristotle attributed to these elements four properties, of 

 which each possessed two. Thus, Earth was cold and 

 dry ; Water, cold and moist ; Air, hot and moist ; and 

 Fire, hot and dry. A fifth element was also conceived by 

 Aristotle to accompany these four; he termed it V\TJ, 

 translated into the Latin Quinta Essentia ; and this was 

 regarded by alchemists of a later date as of the utmost 

 importance, for it was supposed to penetrate the whole 

 world. The ceaseless strivings of the alchemists after 

 the 'quintessence' were due to the notion that, were it 

 discovered, all transmutations would then be possible. 

 Yet the word ' Chemistry' was not, so far as we know, in use 

 in Aristotle's time. It is said to occur in a Greek manu- 

 script of Zosimus, a resident in Panapolis, a city in Egypt, 

 who wrote in the fifth century. It appeared to mean the 

 art of making gold and silver ; for the title of his work is 

 given by Scaliger as * A faithful Description of the sacred 

 and divine Art of making gold and silver.' M. Berthelot, 

 who has made a detailed study of ancient Greek, Arabic, 

 Syriac, and Latin manuscripts relating to early chemistry, 

 believes that the attempts to transmute metals arose, not 

 from any philosophical notions regarding the nature of 

 elements, but from fraudulent attempts of goldsmiths to 

 pass off base metals on their customers for silver and 

 gold. One of the earliest manuscripts on record dates 

 from the third century, and is preserved at Leiden in 

 Holland. It was found in a tomb in Thebes in 1828. 

 It is a rough and ill-spelt collection of workman's receipts 

 for working in metals, in which frequent reference is 

 made to an alloy of copper and tin an alloy which in 

 many respects resembles gold. It is apparently a manu- 



