ON VETERINARY CHEMISTRY. 
95 
mans, by whom it was pretty successfully cultivated as far as re- 
lated to the arts and the production of the luxuries of the table. 
They understood the preparation of wines and ardent spirits, knew 
the application of manures, and used asbestos to prepare an in- 
combustible linen for preserving the ashes of the dead, distinct 
from those of the wood of the pile, in the performance of funereal 
rites. Driven from Europe by the inroads of the barbarians, it 
obtained an asylum with the Arabians, by whom the sciences were 
much cultivated, particularly about the beginning of the ninth cen- 
tury. From them it gradually found its way into Spain, and the 
then different Christian kingdoms, the progress Christianity was 
making being the means of its promulgation ; for it is notorious 
that, as Christianity has prevailed in its purity, so have the sciences 
advanced. The disseminators were the zealous but misled Cru- 
saders. 
From the eleventh to the sixteenth centuries, the art, absurd as 
we now know it to be, of making gold and silver was studied in 
Germany, Italy, France, and England with considerable assiduity. 
The cultivators of it were called Alchemists, a name derived, ac- 
cording to Bryant, from chemia, and that word from Cham, or Ham, 
the Egyptians being deeply skilled in astronomy and geography, 
chemistry and physic. The syllable Al was prefixed by the 
Arabs, who appear to have been the first to reduce the art to form 
and order, and thus laid the foundation of scientific chemistry. 
It has been remarked that alchemy may have suggested the 
chemical processes, but that the Arabians applied them to the pre- 
paration of medicines, and thus opened a new field for investigation. 
The alchemists then took their name from the art or science they 
studied — alchemy, or the art of transmuting the various ignoble 
metals into gold. Their opinion of these substances was diametri- 
cally opposite to that entertained at the present day. They con- 
sidered all the metals to be compounds — the baser ones possessing 
the same constituents as gold, but contaminated by impurities, and, 
these impurities being removed by their various processes, gold 
alone remained. 
The substance to effect this separation was what they chiefly 
sought after, and to which they gave the name of the philosopher’s 
stone. Nor were there wanting those who boasted of possessing 
it. Need I say that they had recourse to tricks in order to deceive 
the unwary ? This is sufficiently proved by their travelling from 
place to place in order to sell the recipe. No man could need 
money if he had a talisman capable of converting all it touched 
into gold. 
The delusion has now passed away, and yet, not many years 
since, some of its votaries remained, and in England too. In 1782, 
