252 MODERN SCIENCE READER 



''divine fluid" which became an integral part of every 

 full-blown adept's stock-in-trade. Later on the fluid was 

 defined to be "potable gold"; and the obscure but persist- 

 ent relationship between the transmutation of metals and 

 the cure of human ills was primitively emphasized by the 

 inclusion of the Egyptian Cnuphis, the healing "soul of the 

 world," among leading lights of the art, under the alias 

 of Agathodemon. 



Early lists of goldmakers were compiled with small re- 

 gard to probability. They comprise the names of Plato, 

 Aristotle, Heracleitus, Porphyry, the Emperor Heraclius, 

 and Cleopatra, the last entry being due to a confusion of 

 designations between her of the "bold black eyes" and a 

 genuine artist of that name. Another female alchemist 

 was the supposed inventor of the bain-marie, Mary the 

 Jewess. Her co-religionists at Alexandria were strongly 

 imbued with the mysticism of metallurgy ; the related doc- 

 trines had an unmistakable Jewish complexion, and the 

 Cabbala was pored over by their adherents no less atten- 

 tively and devoutly than the works of Trismegistus himself. 



The first historical report of an experiment in transmu- 

 tation has been handed down by Pliny the Elder. 1 Caligula 

 was the experimenter. Hoping to allay the gold-hunger 

 which has not yet ceased to gnaw at the vitals of the sons 

 of Adam, he built a furnace, and caused a quantity of 

 orpiment to be calcined. The result did not come up to 

 his expectations; king's yellow (trisulphid of arsenic), 

 for all its deceptive glitter, did not prove to be "pay- 

 gravel ' ' ; the outlay exceeded the intake, and the ruler who 

 made his horse consul of Rome was, nevertheless, sane 

 enough to withdraw his capital from a losing business. A 

 later emperor, Anastasius of Byzantium, sent the proto- 

 chemist, Johannes Isthmius, to end his fraudulent career 

 in the fortress of Petra. Pseudo-science, too, has its 

 "martyrs." But the tide of folly rose with the march of 

 time, and both in France and England, in the fifteenth 



*M. Berthelot, Les Origines de I'Alchimie, page 69, 



