The Romance of Modern Chemistry

CHAPTER II ALCHEMY AND THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE IN the previous chapter it was suggested that the historical development of chemistry has resembled the gradual exploration of a cavern full of wonder and of treasure. The reader must not suppose, however, that the progress of the exploration has at all times been equally rapid and equally important. On the contrary, there have been centuries during which chemists con- tributed very little to the real advance of their science, simply because their explorations were carried out under an entirely false guiding principle. This remark applies to the long period in the Middle Ages during which devotion to alchemy was supreme, and although the alchemists in the course of what some one has called their “ potterings ” found out many new substances, and invented many useful processes, their work was singularly unproductive in the interpretation of chemical phenomena, and in the discovery of general principles. They missed the spacious chambers in the cavern because in their blind adherence to the idea that it was possible to convert the baser metals into gold, they lost their way in subterranean passages where little treasure was to be found. We have seen that in the nations of antiquity the theoretical and practical sides of natural science were kept absolutely separate. This state of affairs, so dis- 21