The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry

*Transcriber's Note: Original "Cagliosto". CHAPTER IX. PARACELSUS AND SOME OTHER ALCHEMISTS. The accounts which have come to us of the men who followed the pursuit of the One Thing are vague, scrappy, and confusing. Alchemical books abound in quotations from the writings of Geber. Five hundred treatises were attributed to this man during the middle ages, yet we have no certain knowledge of his name, or of the time or place of his birth. Hoefer says he probably lived in the middle of the 8th century, was a native of Mesopotamia, and was named Djabar Al-Konfi. Waite calls him Abou Moussah Djafar al-Sofi. Some of the mediæval adepts spoke of him as the King of India, others called him a Prince of Persia. Most of the Arabian writers on alchemy and medicine, after the 9th century, refer to Geber as their master. All the MSS. of writings attributed to Geber which have been examined are in Latin, but the library of Leyden is said to possess some works by him written in Arabic. These MSS. contain directions for preparing many metals, salts, acids, oils, etc., and for performing such operations as distillation, cupellation, dissolution, calcination, and the like. Of the other Arabian alchemists, the most celebrated in the middle ages were Rhasis, Alfarabi, and Avicenna, who are supposed to have lived in the 9th and 10th centuries. The following story of Alfarabi's powers is taken from Waite's Lives of the Alchemystical Philosophers:--