ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL CHEMISTRY. 109 



ANCIENT AND MEDIAEVAL CHEMISTRY. 



BY M. P. E. BERTHELOT. 



/"CHEMISTRY is a modern science, constituted hardly a Gen- 

 s'^ tury ago ; but its theoretical problems were discussed and 

 its practices put in operation during all the middle ages. The 

 nations of antiquity were already acquainted with them, and their 

 origin is lost in the night of primitive religions and prehistoric 

 civilizations. I have described elsewhere the first rational at- 

 tempts to explain the chemical transformations of matter, and 

 purpose now to speak of the chemical industries of the ancient 

 world, and their transmission to the Latins of the middle ages. 

 The story is of interest as showing how the cultivation of the 

 sciences has been perpetuated in the material line by the necessi- 

 ties of their adaptations, through the catastrophes of invasions 

 and the ruin of civilization. Only the total extermination of 

 populations, such as was at times practiced by the Mongols and 

 the Tartars, could completely destroy this cultivation. But such 

 horrors as those perpetrated by Tamerlane have been of rare 

 occurrence. 



From the most remote times man has applied chemical opera- 

 tions to his necessities, performing them for metallurgy, ceramics, 

 dyeing, painting, the preservation of food, medicine, and the art 

 of war. While gold and sometimes silver and copper existed in 

 the native state, and required only mechanical preparation, lead, 

 tin, iron, and often copper and silver, had to be extracted from 

 their usual minerals by very complicated artifices. The produc- 

 tion of alloys necessary for the fabrication of arms, money, and 

 jewels is also an essentially chemical art. The study of the alloys 

 used in goldsmiths' work gave rise to the prejudices and frauds 

 of alchemy, as is proved by the testimony of an Egyptian papyrus 

 preserved in the Ley den Museum, and of the writings of the Gre- 

 cian alchemists. 



The art of preparing cement, pottery, and glass likewise de- 

 pends on chemical operations. The workmen who dyed cloths, 

 clothing, and tapestries in purple or other colors, an industry 

 practiced first in Egypt and Syria and then in all the Grecian, 

 Roman, and Persian world, not to speak of the extreme East, em- 

 ployed highly developed chemical manipulations ; and the cloths 

 found on the mummies and in the sarcophagi attest their perfec- 

 tion. Pliny and Vitruvius describe in detail the production of 

 colors, such as cinnabar or vermilion, minium, red chalk, indigo, 

 black, green, and blue colors, vegetable as well as mineral, per- 

 formed by painters. The chemistry of alimentation, fruitful in 

 resources and in frauds, was next practiced. The art was known 



