198 MODERN SCIENCE READER 



ALCHEMY 1 



Alchemy is to modern chemistry what astrology is to 

 astronomy, or legend to history. In the eye of the astrol- 

 oger, a knowledge of the stars was valuable as a means of 

 foretelling, or even of influencing, future events. In like 

 manner, the genuine alchemist toiled with his crucibles 

 and alembics, calcining, subliming, distilling, with two 

 grand objects, as illusory as those of the astrologer to dis- 

 cover, namely, (1) the secret of transmuting the baser 

 metals into gold and silver, and (2) the means of indefi- 

 nitely prolonging human life. 



Tradition points to Egypt as the birthplace of the science, 

 and the most probable etymology of the name is, as was 

 pointed out above, that it is connected with the most 

 ancient and native name of Egypt, Chcmi (the scripture 

 Cham or Ham). The Greeks and Romans under the 

 empire would seem to have become acquainted with it from 

 the Egyptians; there is no reason to believe that either 

 people had in early times either the name or the thing. 

 Chemia occurs in the lexicon of Suidas, written about the 

 eleventh century, and is explained by him to be "the con- 

 version of silver and gold." It is to the Arabs, from whom 

 Europe got the name and the art, that the term owes the 

 prefixed article al (the) ; as if chemia had been a generic 

 term embracing all chemical operations, such as the decoct- 

 ing and compounding of ordinary drugs, and the chemia 

 (al-chemy) the term to denote the grand operation of 

 transmuting metals the chemistry of chemistries. The 

 Roman Emperor Caligula is said to have instituted exper- 

 iments for the producing of gold out of orpiment (sulphide 

 of arsenic) ; and in the time of Diocletian, the passion for 

 this pursuit, conjoined with magical arts, had become so 

 prevalent in the empire that that emperor is said to have 

 ordered all Egyptian works treating of the chemistry of 



1 From The New International Encyclopaedia, vol. i, page 289. 

 Copyright 1902, 1904, 1905, 190G, 1907, 1909 by Dodd, Mead & Co. 



