The Romance of Modern Chemistry

THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE space of eight centuries or thereabout the efforts of the great majority of those people who studied chemistry were directed to the discovery of the Philosopher’s Stone—the Great Elixir which should have the power °f changing lead or any other common metal into the noble gold. F we are to trust the records that have come down to us, the philosopher’s stone was not only sought for, but found,—hy a few favoured individuals. An eminent physician and chemist, van Helmont by name, who lived in the seventeenth century, states that with a small speci- men of the philosopher’s stone, received from an unknown source, e had transformed a considerable quantity of mercury into pure gold. A little later a physician in the household of the Prince of Orange published a detailed description of the way m which, with the help of a certain preparation, he had effected the transmutation of lead into gold. What are we to make of these stories ? For no single chemlst nowadays believes that anybody ever succeeded in producing so much as one grain of gold from any of the baser metals. The two men whose statements about the production of gold have just been quoted were eminently respectable, and there seems to be no ground whatever for supposing that they wished to deceive their contemporaries or posterity. The only conclusion to which we can come is that they were themselves deceived that they were the victims of illusion. That seems to be the most charitable explanation. We may, however, ask the question whether there was anything at all to account for the transmutation of metals being regarded as an incontrovertible fact for so W a period No doubt the ancient tendency to place more 24