200 MODERN SCIENCE READER 



pharmacy) out of various mixtures of such chemicals as 

 they knew. They had their pestles and mortars, their cru- 

 cibles and furnaces, their alembics and aludels, their ves- 

 sels for infusion, for decoction, for cohobation, sublimation, 

 fixation, lixiviation, filtration, coagulation, etc. Their 

 scientific creed was transmutation, and their methods were 

 mostly blind gropings; and yet in this way they found out 

 many a new substance and invented many a useful process. 

 From the Arabs alchemy found its way through Spain 

 into Europe, and speedily became entangled with the 

 fantastic subtleties of the scholastic philosophy. In the 

 middle ages it was chiefly the monks that occupied them- 

 selves with alchemy. Pope John XXII took great delight 

 in it, though it was after forbidden by his successor. The 

 earliest authentic works on European alchemy now extant 

 are those of Roger Bacon (died about 1294) and Albertus 

 Magnus. Bacon appears rather the earlier of the two as 

 a writer, and is really the greatest man in all the school. 

 He was acquainted with gunpowder. Although he con- 

 demned magic, necromancy, charms and all such things, he 

 believed in the convertibility of the inferior metals into 

 gold, but did not profess to have ever effected the conver- 

 sion. He had more faith in the elixir of life than in gold 

 making. He followed Geber in regarding potable gold 

 that is gold dissolved in aqua regiaas the elixir of life. 

 Urging it on the attention of Pope Nicholas IV he informed 

 his Holiness of an old man who had found some yellow 

 liquor (the solution of gold is yellow) in a golden vial when 

 plowing one day in Sicily. Supposing it to be dew he 

 drank it ; he was thereupon transformed into a hale, robust 

 and highly accomplished youth. Bacon no doubt took 

 many a dose of this golden water himself. Albertus 

 Magnus had a great mastery of the practical chemistry of 

 his times. He was acquainted with alum, caustic alkali, 

 and the purification of the noble metals by lead. In addi- 

 tion to the sulphur-and-mercury theory of metals, drawn 

 from Geber, he regarded the element water as still nearer 



