CHEMISTRY AND ALCHEMY. 



Diocletian burns the Books of Chemistry. Haroun Al-Raschid protects the Sacred Art. Geber, 

 one of the first Chemists. Rhazes. Chemistry in honour amongst the Saracens. Avicenna, 

 . Serapion, Mesue. Albucasis and Averroes. Morienus the Solitary. Albertus Magnus and 

 Gerbert. Vincent of Beauvais. Raymond Lulli. The Lullists, or Dreamers. Arnauld do 

 Villeneuve. Roger Bacon. Invention of Spectacles. Alchemy in the Fifteenth Century. 

 J. B. Porta, the Italian. Origin of the Rosicrucians. Paracelsus. George Agricola. 

 Conrad Gessner. Cornelius Agrippa. The Story of Nicholas Flamel. Alchemy engenders 

 Metallurgy. 



HEMISTRY, which in the first centuries 

 of the Christian era had no practical 

 application, consisted merely of a few 

 vague and entirely speculative theories, 

 and was confounded with physics, under 

 the appellations of divine art, sacred art, 

 and sacred science, in the incoherent mass 

 of transcendental propositions which 

 made up high philosophy. The word 

 chemistry (from the Greek \rjfiifla, clujii/i/i 

 in Latin), used for the first time by 

 Suidas, a lexicographer of the tenth 



century, at first meant an alloy of gold and silver. Suidas mentions, in this 

 connection, that the Emperor Diocletian, irritated by a revolt of the 

 Egyptians against the laws of the empire, had all their books of chemistry 

 committed to the flames, so as to punish them for their rebellion by pre- 

 venting them from carrying on the lucrative business arising out of the 

 melting and working of precious metals (Fig. 125). In another part of his 

 Lexicon he states that the Golden Fleece, which the Argonauts went in search 

 of, was but the ancient papyrus in which was contained the secret for making 

 gold. 



Without attaching overmuch importance to these dim traditions, they 



