The Romance of Modern Chemistry

THE PHILOSOPHER’S STONE mists1 doings and writings helped to smother the truth. Naturally, a man who thought he had discovered the philosopher’s stone and could turn lead into gold, was very careful not to let his secret get abroad, for if every one knew the trick, the gold would have no more value than the lead out of which it was made. Hence the writings of the alchemists are full of the most unintel- ligible nonsense that was ever put on paper. Many of them profess to describe their method of preparing the philosopher’s stone, but the description consists of nothing but foolish jargon. Perhaps the best way to bring home to the reader the extraordinary character of the alchemistic writings is to quote the following translation from a book on alchemy that appeared in 1608. The philosopher’s stone is supposed to be describing itself: “I am the old dragon that is present everywhere on the face of the earth ; I am father and mother; youthful and ancient; weak and yet more strong ; life and death ; visible and invisible ; hard and soft; descending to the earth and ascending to the heavens; most high and most low; light and heavy; in me, the order of nature is oftentimes inverted, in colour, number, weights and measure. ... I am the carbuncle of the sun, a most noble clarified earth, by which thou mayest turn copper, iron, tin and lead into most pure gold.” The philosopher’s stone was supposed to possess the most marvellous power, Roger Bacon, one of our own countrymen, declaring that it was able to transform a million times its weight of base metal into gold. Be- sides this it was supposed to have the power of prolong- ing life, and was therefore regarded as an “ elixir vitae.” Many other beliefs held at that time were, however,