The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry Part 7

It is evident from the _Canon's Yeoman's Tale_ in Chaucer, that many of those who professed to turn the base metals into gold were held in bad repute as early as the 14th century. The "false chanoun" persuaded the priest, who was his dupe, to send his servant for quicksilver, which he promised to make into "as good silver and as fyn, As ther is any in youre purse or myn"; he then gave the priest a "crosselet," and bid him put it on the fire, and blow the coals. While the priest was busy with the fire,

This false chanoun--the foule feend hym fecche!-- Out of his bosom took a bechen cole, In which ful subtilly was maad an hole, And therinne put was of silver lemaille An ounce, and stopped was withouten faille The hole with wex, to kepe the lemaille in.

The "false chanoun" pretended to be sorry for the priest, who was so busily blowing the fire:--

Ye been right hoot, I se wel how ye swete; Have heer a clooth, and wipe awey the we't.

And whyles that the preest wiped his face, This chanoun took his cole with harde grace, And leyde it above, upon the middeward Of the crosselet, and blew wel afterward.

Til that the coles gonne faste brenne.

As the coal burned the silver fell into the "crosselet." Then the canon said they would both go together and fetch chalk, and a pail of water, for he would pour out the silver he had made in the form of an ingot. They locked the door, and took the key with them. On returning, the canon formed the chalk into a mould, and poured the contents of the crucible into it. Then he bade the priest,

Look what ther is, put in thin hand and grope, Thow fynde shalt ther silver, as I hope.

What, devel of h.e.l.le! Sholde it ellis be?

Shavyng of silver silver is, _parde!_ He putte his hand in, and took up a teyne Of silver fyn, and glad in every veyne Was this preest, when he saugh that it was so.

The conclusion of the _Canon's Yeoman's Tale_ shows that, in the 14th century, there was a general belief in the possibility of finding the philosopher's stone, and effecting the trans.m.u.tation, although the common pract.i.tioners of the art were regarded as deceivers. A disciple of Plato is supposed to ask his master to tell him the "name of the privee stoon." Plato gives him certain directions, and tells him he must use _magnasia_; the disciple asks--

'What is Magnasia, good sire, I yow preye?'

'It is a water that is maad, I seye, Of elementes foure,' quod Plato.

'Telle me the roote, good sire,' quod he tho, Of that water, if it be youre wille.'

'Nay, nay,' quod Plato, 'certein that I nylle; The philosophres sworn were everychoon That they sholden discovers it unto noon, Ne in no book it write in no manere, For unto Crist it is so lief and deere, That he wol nat that it discovered bee, But where it liketh to his deitee Man for tenspire, and eek for to deffende Whom that hym liketh; lo, this is the ende.'

The belief in the possibility of alchemy seems to have been general sometime before Chaucer wrote; but that belief was accompanied by the conviction that alchemy was an impious pursuit, because the trans.m.u.tation of baser metals into gold was regarded as trenching on the prerogative of the Creator, to whom alone this power rightfully belonged. In his _Inferno_ (which was probably written about the year 1300), Dante places the alchemists in the eighth circle of h.e.l.l, not apparently because they were fraudulent impostors, but because, as one of them says, "I aped creative nature by my subtle art."

In later times, some of those who pretended to have the secret and to perform great wonders by the use of it, became rich and celebrated, and were much sought after. The most distinguished of these pseudo-alchemists was he who pa.s.sed under the name of Cagliostro. His life bears witness to the eagerness of human beings to be deceived.

Joseph Balsamo was born in 1743 at Palermo, where his parents were tradespeople in a good way of business.[5] In the memoir of himself, which he wrote in prison, Balsamo seeks to surround his birth and parentage with mystery; he says, "I am ignorant, not only of my birthplace, but even of the parents who bore me.... My earliest infancy was pa.s.sed in the town of Medina, in Arabia, where I was brought up under the name of Acharat."

[5] The account of the life of Cagliostro is much condensed from Mr A.E. Waite's _Lives of the Alchemystical Philosophers_.

When he was thirteen years of age, Balsamo's parents determined he should be trained for the priesthood, but he ran away from his school.

He was then confined in a Benedictine monastery. He showed a remarkable taste for natural history, and acquired considerable knowledge of the use of drugs; but he soon tired of the discipline and escaped. For some years he wandered about in different parts of Italy, living by his wits and by cheating. A goldsmith consulted him about a hidden treasure; he pretended to invoke the aid of spirits, frightened the goldsmith, got sixty ounces of gold from him to carry on his incantations, left him in the lurch, and fled to Messina. In that town he discovered an aged aunt who was sick; the aunt died, and left her money to the Church. Balsamo a.s.sumed her family name, added a t.i.tle of n.o.bility, and was known henceforward as the Count Alessandro Cagliostro.

In Messina he met a mysterious person whom he calls Altotas, and from whom, he says in his Memoir, he learnt much. The following account of the meeting of Balsamo and the stranger is taken from Waite's book: "As he was promenading one day near the jetty at the extremity of the port he encountered an individual singularly habited and possessed of a most remarkable countenance. This person, aged apparently about fifty years, seemed to be an Armenian, though, according to other accounts, he was a Spaniard or Greek. He wore a species of caftan, a silk bonnet, and the extremities of his breeches were concealed in a pair of wide boots. In his left hand he held a parasol, and in his right the end of a cord, to which was attached a graceful Albanian greyhound.... Cagliostro saluted this grotesque being, who bowed slightly, but with satisfied dignity. 'You do not reside in Messina, signor?' he said in Sicilian, but with a marked foreign accent.

Cagliostro replied that he was tarrying for a few days, and they began to converse on the beauty of the town and on its advantageous situation, a kind of Oriental imagery individualising the eloquence of the stranger, whose remarks were, moreover, adroitly adorned with a few appropriate compliments."

Although the stranger said he received no one at his house he allowed Cagliostro to visit him. After various mysterious doings the two went off to Egypt, and afterwards to Malta, where they performed many wonderful deeds before the Grand Master, who was much impressed. At Malta Altotas died, or, at anyrate, vanished. Cagliostro then travelled for some time, and was well received by n.o.blemen, amba.s.sadors, and others in high position. At Rome he fell in love with a young and beautiful lady, Lorenza Feliciani, and married her.

Cagliostro used his young wife as a decoy to attract rich and foolish men. He and his wife thrived for a time, and acc.u.mulated money and jewels; but a confederate betrayed them, and they fled to Venice, and then wandered for several years in Italy, France, and England. They seem to have made a living by the sale of lotions for the skin, and by practising skilful deceptions.

About the year 1770 Cagliostro began to pose as an alchemist. After another period of wandering he paid a second visit to London and founded a secret society, based on (supposed) Egyptian rites, mingled with those of freemasonry. The suggestion of this society is said to have come from a curious book he picked up on a second-hand stall in London. The society attracted people by the strangeness of its initiatory rites, and the promises of happiness and wellbeing made by its founder to those who joined it. Lodges were established in many countries, many disciples were obtained, great riches were ama.s.sed, and Cagliostro flourished exceedingly.

In his _Histoire du Merveilleux dans les Temps modernes_, Figuier, speaking of Cagliostro about this period of his career, says:

"He proclaimed himself the bearer of the mysteries of Isis and Anubis from the far East.... He obtained numerous and distinguished followers, who on one occasion a.s.sembled in great force to hear Joseph Balsamo expound to them the doctrines of Egyptian freemasonry. At this solemn convention he is said to have spoken with overpowering eloquence;... his audience departed in amazement and completely converted to the regenerated and purified masonry. None doubted that he was an initiate of the arcana of nature, as preserved in the temple of Apis at the era when Cambyses belaboured that capricious divinity.

From this moment the initiations into the new masonry were numerous, albeit they were limited to the aristocracy of society. There are reasons to believe that the grandees who were deemed worthy of admission paid exceedingly extravagantly for the honour."

Cagliostro posed as a physician, and claimed the power of curing diseases simply by the laying on of hands. He went so far as to a.s.sert he had restored to life the dead child of a n.o.bleman in Paris; the discovery that the miracle was effected by subst.i.tuting a living child for the dead one caused him to flee, laden with spoil, to Warsaw, and then to Stra.s.sburg.

Cagliostro entered Stra.s.sburg in state, amid an admiring crowd, who regarded him as more than human. Rumour said he had ama.s.sed vast riches by the trans.m.u.tation of base metals into gold. Some people in the crowd said he was the wandering Jew, others that he had been present at the marriage feast of Cana, some a.s.serted he was born before the deluge, and one supposed he might be the devil. The goldsmith whom he had cheated of sixty ounces of gold many years before was in the crowd, and, recognising him, tried to stop the carriage, shouting: "Joseph Balsamo! It is Joseph! Rogue, where are my sixty ounces of gold?" "Cagliostro scarcely deigned to glance at the furious goldsmith; but in the middle of the profound silence which the incident occasioned among the crowd, a voice, apparently in the clouds, uttered with great distinctness the following words: 'Remove this lunatic, who is possessed by infernal spirits.' Some of the spectators fell on their knees, others seized the unfortunate goldsmith, and the brilliant cortege pa.s.sed on" (Waite).

From Stra.s.sburg Cagliostro* went to Paris, where he lived in great splendour, curing diseases, making gold and diamonds, mystifying and duping people of all ranks by the splendid ritual and gorgeous feasting of his secret society, and ama.s.sing riches. He got entangled in the affair of the Diamond Necklace, and left Paris. Trying to advance his society in Italy he was arrested by the agents of the Inquisition, and imprisoned, then tried, and condemned to death. The sentence was commuted to perpetual imprisonment. After two years in the prison of San Angelo he died at the age of fifty.

*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, sc.r.a.ppy, 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 mediaeval 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_:--

"Alfarabi was returning from a pilgrimage to Mecca, when, pa.s.sing through Syria, he stopped at the Court of the Sultan, and entered his presence, while he was surrounded by numerous sage persons, who were discoursing with the monarch on the sciences. Alfarabi ... presented himself in his travelling attire, and when the Sultan desired he should be seated, with astonishing philosophical freedom he planted himself at the end of the royal sofa. The Prince, aghast at his boldness, called one of his officers, and in a tongue generally unknown commanded him to eject the intruder.

The philosopher, however, promptly made answer in the same tongue: 'Oh, Lord, he who acts hastily is liable to hasty repentance.' The Prince was equally astounded to find himself understood by the stranger as by the manner in which the reply was given. Anxious to know more of his guest he began to question him, and soon discovered that he was acquainted with seventy languages. Problems for discussion were then propounded to the philosophers, who had witnessed the discourteous intrusion with considerable indignation and disgust, but Alfarabi disputed with so much eloquence and vivacity that he reduced all the doctors to silence, and they began writing down his discourse. The Sultan then ordered his musicians to perform for the diversion of the company. When they struck up, the philosopher accompanied them on a lute with such infinite grace and tenderness that he elicited the unmeasured admiration of the whole distinguished a.s.sembly. At the request of the Sultan he produced a piece of his own composing, sang it, and accompanied it with great force and spirit to the delight of all his hearers. The air was so sprightly that even the gravest philosopher could not resist dancing, but by another tune he as easily melted them to tears, and then by a soft un.o.btrusive melody he lulled the whole company to sleep."

The most remarkable of the alchemists was he who is generally known as _Paracelsus_. He was born about 1493, and died about 1540. It is probable that the place of his birth was Einsiedeln, near Zurich. He claimed relationship with the n.o.ble family of Bombast von Hohenheim; but some of his biographers doubt whether he really was connected with that family. His name, or at any rate the name by which he was known, was Aureolus Philippus Theophrastus Bombast von Hohenheim. His father in alchemy, Trimethius, Abbot of Spannheim and then of Wurzburg, who was a theologian, a poet, an astronomer, and a necromancer, named him _Paracelsus_; this name is taken by some to be a kind of Graeco-Latin paraphrase of von Hohenheim (of high lineage), and to mean "belonging to a lofty place"; others say it signifies "greater than Celsus," who was a celebrated Latin writer on medicine of the 1st century.

Paracelsus studied at the University of Basle; but, getting into trouble with the authorities, he left the university, and for some years wandered over Europe, supporting himself, according to one account, by "psalm-singing, astrological productions, chiromantic soothsaying, and, it has been said, by necromantic practices." He may have got as far as Constantinople; as a rumour floated about that he received the Stone of Wisdom from an adept in that city. He returned to Basle, and in 1527 delivered lectures with the sanction of the Rector of the university. He made enemies of the physicians by abusing their custom of seeking knowledge only from ancient writers and not from nature; he annoyed the apothecaries by calling their tinctures, decoctions, and extracts, mere _soup-messes_; and he roused the ire of all learned people by delivering his lectures in German. He was attacked publicly and also anonymously. Of the pamphlets published against him he said, "These vile ribaldries would raise the ire of a turtle-dove." And Paracelsus was no turtle-dove. The following extract from (a translation of) the preface to _The Book concerning the Tinctures of the Philosophers written against those Sophists born since the Deluge_, shews that his style of writing was abusive, and his opinion of himself, to say the least, not very humble:--

"From the middle of this age the Monarchy of all the Arts has been at length derived and conferred on me, Theophrastus Paracelsus, Prince of Philosophy and Medicine. For this purpose I have been chosen by G.o.d to extinguish and blot out all the phantasies of elaborate and false works, of delusive and presumptuous words, be they the words of Aristotle, Galen, Avicenna, Mesva, or the dogmas of any among their followers. My theory, proceeding as it does from the light of Nature, can never, through its consistency, pa.s.s away or be changed; but in the fifty-eighth year after its millennium and a half it will then begin to flourish. The practice at the same time following upon the theory will be proved by wonderful and incredible signs, so as to be open to mechanics and common people, and they will thoroughly understand how firm and immovable is that Paracelsic Art against the triflings of the Sophists; though meanwhile that sophistical science has to have its inept.i.tude propped up and fortified by papal and imperial privileges.... So then, you wormy and lousy Sophist, since you deem the monarch of Arcana a mere ignorant, fatuous, and prodigal quack, now, in this mid age, I determine in my present treatise to disclose the honourable course of procedure in these matters, the virtues and preparation of the celebrated Tincture of the Philosophers for the use and honour of all who love the truth, and in order that all who despise the true arts may be reduced to poverty."

The turbulent and restless spirit of Paracelsus brought him into open conflict with the authorities of Basle. He fled from that town in 1528, and after many wanderings, he found rest at Salzburg, under the protection of the archbishop. He died at Salzburg in 1541, in his forty-eighth year.

The character and abilities of Paracelsus have been vastly praised by some, and inordinately abused by others. One author says of him: "He lived like a pig, looked like a drover, found his greatest enjoyment in the company of the most dissolute and lowest rabble, and throughout his glorious life he was generally drunk." Another author says: "Probably no physician has grasped his life's task with a purer enthusiasm, or devoted himself more faithfully to it, or more fully maintained the moral worthiness of his calling than did the reformer of Einsiedeln." He certainly seems to have been loved and respected by his pupils and followers, for he is referred to by them as "the n.o.ble and beloved monarch," "the German Hemes," and "our dear Preceptor and King of Arts."

There seems no doubt that Paracelsus discovered many facts which became of great importance in chemistry: he prepared the inflammable gas we now call hydrogen, by the reaction between iron filings and oil of vitriol; he distinguished metals from substances which had been cla.s.sed with metals but lacked the essential metalline character of ductility; he made medicinal preparations of mercury, lead and iron, and introduced many new and powerful drugs, notably laudanum.

Paracelsus insisted that medicine is a branch of chemistry, and that the restoration of the body of a patient to a condition of chemical equilibrium is the restoration to health.

Paracelsus trusted in his method; he was endeavouring to subst.i.tute direct appeal to nature for appeal to the authority of writers about nature. "After me," he cries, "you Avicenna, Galen, Rhasis, Montagnana and the others. You after me, not I after you. You of Paris, you of Montpellier, you of Swabia, of Meissen and Vienna; you who come from the countries along the Danube and the Rhine; and you, too, from the Islands of the Ocean. Follow me. It is not for me to follow you, for mine is the monarchy." But the work was too arduous, the struggle too unequal. "With few appliances, with no accurate knowledge, with no help from the work of others, without polished and sharpened weapons, and without the skill that comes from long handling of instruments of precision, what could Paracelsus effect in his struggle to wrest her secrets from nature? Of necessity, he grew weary of the task, and tried to construct a universe which should be simpler than that most complex order which refused to yield to his a.n.a.lysis." And so he came back to the universe which man constructs for himself, and exclaimed--

"Each man has ... all the wisdom and power of the world in himself; he possesses one kind of knowledge as much as another, and he who does not find that which is in him cannot truly say that he does not possess it, but only that he was not capable of successfully seeking for it."

We leave a great genius, with his own words in our ears: "Have no care of my misery, reader; let me bear my burden myself. I have two failings: my poverty and my piety. My poverty was thrown in my face by a Burgomaster who had perhaps only seen doctors attired in silken robes, never basking in tattered rags in the sunshine. So it was decreed I was not a doctor. For my piety I am arraigned by the parsons, for ... I do not at all love those who teach what they do not themselves practise."