i86 



CHEMISTRY AND ALCHEMY. 



Moreover, the alchemists went to work in tin unmethodical way, and 

 without any scientific theory. Their systems as to the moral value of metals, 

 as to the existence of an exceptional and indecomposable body, and as to the 

 search for a universal panacea could not lead to any result. They took one 

 by one the substances belonging to the three kingdoms of nature, and treated 

 them by fire and by water ; they combined them together, noting carefully 

 the isolated phenomena produced by the chemical operation ; and they next 

 endeavoured to connect as far as possible these phenomena with the most 

 extraordinary ideas, and then to give to the products obtained a use in 

 conformity with their external characteristics. If some unexpected revela- 

 tions issued from the rows of retorts and matrasses which the alchemist was 

 at work upon, they were attributed to chance, which sometimes led to some 



Fig. 133. A Mint of the Fifteenth Century. Reduced Fac-siinile of a Wood Eugraving at the 

 hase of a Monetary Slip, printed at Louvain in 1487. In the Burgundy Library, Brussels. 



fortunate results in these absurd processes of experimental chemistry. In 

 the fifteenth century the alchemists had, unconsciously in most cases, been 

 the means of disclosing to science, apart from several substances comprised in 

 the materia medica, the existence of bismuth, liver of sulphur, regulus of 

 antimony, and volatile fluorine of alkali. They were expert in distilling 

 alcohol, in volatilising mercury, and in obtaining sulphuric acid by the 

 sublimation of sulphur ; in preparing aqua regia and various kinds of ether, 

 and in purifying the alkalis. They also had a scarlet dye for cloth superior 

 to anything of the present day. Several processes in glass-staining which, 

 though said to be lost, were merely abandoned or forgotten were invented 

 by glass-blowers and enamellers. In all probability the effects of hydrogen, 

 employed as a light-giving medium, revealed themselves to the alchemists 



