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177
The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry
·
M. M. Pattison Muir
82
One
result
of
the
alchemical
modes
of
expression
was,
that
he
who
tried
to
follow
the
directions
given
in
alchemical
books
got
into
dire
confusion.
He
did
not
know
what
substances
to
use
in
his
operations;
for
when
he
was
told
to
employ
"the
homogeneous
water
of
gold,"
for
example,
the
expression
might
mean
anything,
and
in
despair
he
distilled,
and
calcined,
and
cohobated,
and
tried
to
decompose
everything
he
could
lay
hands
on.
Those
who
pretended
to
know
abused
and
vilified
those
who
differed
from
them.
In
A
Demonstration
of
Nature,
by
John
A.
Mehung
(17th
century),
Nature
addresses
the
alchemical
worker
in
the
following
words:--
"You
break
vials,
and
consume
coals,
only
to
soften
your
brains
still
more
with
the
vapours.
You
also
digest
alum,
salt,
orpiment,
and
altrament;
you
melt
metals,
build
small
and
large
furnaces,
and
use
many
vessels;
nevertheless
I
am
sick
of
your
folly,
and
you
suffocate
me
with
your
sulphurous
smoke....
You
would
do
better
to
mind
your
own
business,
than
to
dissolve
and
distil
so
many
absurd
substances,
and
then
to
pass
them
through
alembics,
cucurbits,
stills,
and
pelicans."
Henry
Madathanas,
writing
in
1622,
says:--
"Then
I
understood
that
their
purgations,
sublimations,
cementations,
distillations,
rectifications,
circulations,
putrefactions,
conjunctions,
calcinations,
incinerations,
mortifications,
revivifications,
as
also
their
tripods,
athanors,
reverberatory
alembics,
excrements
of
horses,
ashes,
sand,
stills,
pelican-viols,
retorts,
fixations,
etc.,
are
mere
plausible
impostures
and
frauds."
The
author
of
The
Only
Way
(1677)
says:
"Surely
every
true
Artist
must
look
on
this
elaborate
tissue
of
baseless
operations
as
the
merest
folly,
and
can
only
wonder
that
the
eyes
of
those
silly
dupes
are
not
at
last
opened,
that
they
may
see
something
besides
such
absurd
sophisms,
and
read
something
besides
those
stupid
and
deceitful
books....
I
can
speak
from
bitter
experience,
for
I,
too,
toiled
for
many
years
...
and
endeavoured
to
reach
the
coveted
goal
by
sublimation,
distillation,
calcination,
circulation,
and
so
forth,
and
to
fashion
the
Stone
out
of
substances
such
as
urine,
salt,
atrament,
alum,
etc.
I
have
tried
hard
to
evolve
it
out
of
hairs,
wine,
eggs,
bones,
and
all
manner
of
herbs;
out
of
arsenic,
mercury,
and
sulphur,
and
all
the
minerals
and
metals....
I
have
spent
nights
and
days
in
dissolving,
coagulating,
amalgamating,
and
precipitating.
Yet
from
all
these
things
I
derived
neither
profit
nor
joy."
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