CHAPTER XXIII

MORE ALCHEMISTS OF THE SEVEN¬
TEENTH CENTURY

THE mystical aspect of alchemy was revived by several not¬
able men in the early part of the seventeenth century.
Some were mere visionaries who believed that the Hermetic Art
was of spiritual attainment, its meanings veiled in allegory and
illustrated by symbols, and that the making of gold was not its
chief end and aim. By its study they claimed that man could
be brought into closer communion with his Maker, and disease
and suffering could be banished from the world. Others were
adherents of the Rosicrucian movement, which at that time
spread from Germany into Western Europe. Among the latter
was Jakob Boehme (1575-1624), who claimed to have received
a revelation in a wonderful vision in which the inmost secrets
of Nature were revealed to him. He began life as a journey¬
man shoemaker, and travelled about the country, eventually
settling at Gorlitz in Germany in 1598. Here he began to study
alchemy, and after acquiring some knowledge of the art he
employed its symbolic language in the elaboration of a system
of mystical philosophy which he evolved. He described the
Philosopher’s Stone as the “ Spirit of Christ” which must tinc¬
ture the soul.

Another alchemist of this type was Michael Maier (1568—
1622), who, after studying medicine and acting as secretary to
the Emperor Rudolph, devoted himself to alchemy. He stated
his belief that the ancient mythological legends of the gods and
heroes of the Egyptians and Greeks concealed alchemical truths.

Among the Englishmen was Robert Fludd, who was born
at Milgate House, Bearsted, Kent, in 1 574. He graduated at
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LURE & ROMANCE OF ALCHEMY

Oxford and received the degree of Doctor of Medicine in 1605,
after which he travelled on the Continent, visiting France, Spain,
Italy, and Germany. While abroad he became deeply interested
in alchemy and returned with a considerable knowledge of the
art. He then commenced practising as a physician in London
and met with some success. He applied his mystical beliefs to
medicine and claimed to influence the minds of his patients, thus
aiding their cure. Fludd learned of the Rosicrucian movement
from Michael Maier, who came to London to visit him. He
was the author of numerous works, including the Apologia Com -
pendiaria Fraternitatem de Rosea Cruce suspicionis , in which he
defended the Rosicrucian doctrines against Libavius and con¬
tended that all true natural science was rooted in revelation.
There is a monument and bust to Fludd’s memory in Bearsted
Church, where he was buried.

After him came Thomas Vaughan, the Welsh mystic al¬
chemist and poet, who was bom at Newton, in Brecknockshire,
in 1622, and graduated as Bachelor of Arts at Jesus College,
Oxford, where he afterward was made a Fellow. After fighting
in the Royalist cause Vaughan settled in Oxford and became an
ardent student of chemistry. He was a great admirer of Cor¬
nelius Agrippa, to whom in matters of philosophy he acknow¬
ledged that, “next to God, he owed all that he had.” He held
strong mystical views as regards alchemy and claimed to be “a
philosopher of nature and no mere student of alchemy,” which
he stigmatized as a “torture of metals.” He declared that the
“true Philosopher’s Stone was the Christian Philosopher’s
Stone, a stone often inculcated in scripture.” “This,” he says,
“is the Stone of Fire of Ezekiel, the Stone with the Seven Eyes
upon it in Zacharia and the White Stone with the New Name in
the Revelation.”

Although he published a translation of Fama Fraternitatis , he
protests in the preface that he had “no relations with the Fra¬
ternity [of the Rosy Cross], neither did he desire their acquain¬
tance.” Vaughan wrote and published verse in English and in
210

A MYSTIC ALCHEMIST IN HIS LABORATORY
Viridarum Chytnicum (1688)

210

PAGE FROM A MANUSCRIPT ON ALCHEMY, DATED 1576,

BY CHRISTOPHER VON HIRSCHENBERG

This manuscript is said to have originally been in the library of the Emperor Rudolph II
of Austria. It contains a list of chemical substances and their symbols.

By courtesy of Messrs Maggs Bros.

■ I

m

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MORE XVIIth-CENTURY ALCHEMISTS

Latin, most of his works being written under the pseudonym of
“Eugenius Philalethes.” Among the books on alchemy attri¬
buted to him are Lumen de Lumine (1652), Aula Lucis , or The
House of Light (1652), and The Chy mist's Key to Shut and to
Open , or The True Doctrine of Corruption and Generation (1657).

ALCHEMISTS AT WORK IN A LABORATORY

From Theatrum Chymicum (1693)

Vaughan died at the early age of forty-four, at Albury, owing,
it is said, to the inhalation of poisonous fumes from some
mercury with which he was experimenting.

Leaving the mystics for the more practical practitioners of the
art, we find in Jean Baptiste van Helmont, who was born at
Brussels in 1577, one of the most notable men of his time.
With the intention of practising medicine, van Helmont studied
for some years at the University of Louvain, where he eventually
became Professor of Surgery, but, tiring of the routine of

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LURE & ROMANCE OF ALCHEMY

teaching, he resigned his post and, like Paracelsus, of whom he
was a great admirer, he set out to travel. He gathered know¬
ledge in all the countries he visited, and on his return resolved
to apply himself seriously to the study of alchemy.

He was a man of marked religious temperament and, inspired
by the work of Thomas a Kempis, gave his services freely to
those who sought his advice. As an alchemist he firmly believed
in the Philosopher’s Stone and the Elixir of Life and claimed to
have been successful in transmuting mercury into gold, but, like
many of his predecessors, he did not know the composition of
the ‘projecting powder’ he used. He states:

He who first gave me the gold-making powder had likewise also
at least as much of it as might be sufficient to change two hundred
thousand pounds of gold. For he gave me perhaps half a grain of
that powder, and nine ounces and three quarters of quicksilver
were thereby transchanged. But that gold a strange man, being
a friend of one evening’s acquaintance, gave me.

Here again we have the oft-repeated story of the stranger who
gave away the mysterious medium and then disappeared.

Van Helmont goes on to say regarding the ‘powder of pro¬
jection’:

I have divers times seen it and handled it with my hands, but it
was of colour such as is saffron in its powder, yet weighty and
shining like unto powdered glass.

There was once given unto me one-fourth part of one grain;
but I call a grain the six-hundredth part of one ounce. This
quarter of a grain therefore being roaled up in paper, I projected
upon eight ounces of Quicksilver made hot in a crucible, and
straightway all the Quicksilver with a certain degree of noise stood
still from flowing and being congealed settled like unto a yellow
lump ; but after poring it out, the bellows blowing, there were found
eight ounces and a little less than eleven grains of the purest gold.

Whatever may be the explanation of this experiment, van
Helmont was evidently convinced that he had effected a success¬
ful transmutation.

He did not believe in the third principle, which Valentine
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MORE XVIIth-CENTURY ALCHEMISTS

called salt, and in his Paradoxal Discourses thus refers to the
constitution of gold :

Metals consist universally of a hot and cold sulphur. They are
as male and female in respect to both of which, the more intimately
they are united or naturally interwoven, the nearer the metals ap¬
proach to the nature of gold.

And from the difference and disparity of this union arises the
distinction of all metals and minerals, that is in the proportions as
the said sulphurs are. more or less united in them.

If metals be produced and consist by the union of these two,
when then is there room for a third principle in metals which is
vulgarly called salt?

Ask Nature of what she makes gold and silver in the gold and
silver mines, and she will answer, out of red and white arsenic,
but she will tell thee withal that indeed gold and silver are made
of the same.

For the gold which is there in its vital place when it is wrought
and made, is killed by the abundance of arsenic and afterwards made
alive again and volatilized to bring forth other creatures as vege¬
tables and animals and to give unto them being and life.

But, in spite of his belief in the delusions common in his time,
van Helmont proved himself to be an original investigator and
was practically the founder of pneumatic chemistry. He was
the first to mention the different characters of gaseous sub¬
stances, to give them the generic name of ‘gas,’ and to dis¬
tinguish them from other vapours. Although he never
succeeded in collecting them, he discovered and proved the
presence of carbonic-acid gas, which he called ‘gas sylvestre.’
He showed how it was formed when charcoal was burned, and
discovered its presence in the mineral waters of Spa. He classi¬
fied gases as flammable and inflammable, and showed that air
was not a modification of water.

Like Paracelsus, van Helmont was a firm believer in magne¬
tism, and declared that it predominated everywhere and was an
unknown property of a heavenly nature. He also recommended
the employment of chemical substances in medicine, and was
the first to use alum as a styptic in uterine haemorrhage. He

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LURE & ROMANCE OF ALCHEMY

discounted the value of bleeding on the ground that it had a
tendency to debilitate the patient. He was a pioneer in the
analysis of urine, and, in 1655, was the first to make an investiga¬
tion into its composition; as a result, he devised a method of
examining it by weight and urged its importance in the diagnosis
of disease.

Another practical chemist who flourished at this period was
Johann Rudolf Glauber, who was born at Karlstadt, in Germany,
in 1604. Like van Helmont, he began with the belief in the
dreams of the alchemists, but in spite of this he carried out some
valuable work in applied chemistry, and some of his processes
have continued in use to the present day. He was the first to
make sulphate of soda, which is still commonly known as
Glauber’s salt, and attributed to it remarkable medicinal
virtues. This discovery was brought about by his analysis of
the mineral spring at Neustadt, which he visited in order to take
the waters and from which he derived great benefit. Before his
visit the water from the spring was known as ‘saltpetre water,’
as it was believed to be impregnated with potassium nitrate, but
Glauber proved it to contain sodium sulphate. He distilled
ammonia from bones and demonstrated the art of making sal
ammoniac by the addition of sea-salt. His ammonium sulphate
is now used in the production of other ammonia salts and as
a fertilizer. He also investigated pyroligneous acid, produced
the chlorides of arsenic and zinc, and added considerably to the
knowledge of the chemistry of wines and the distillation of
spirits. He died at Amsterdam in 1668.

Mention should be made of Giambattista della Porta, a Nea¬
politan, for, although he achieved no great renown as an al¬
chemist, he was a remarkable man in many ways and made dis¬
coveries in several branches of science. He was a profound
student of physiognomy, and in one of his works makes some
fantastic comparisons between the faces and features of human
beings and those of birds and animals. He further attempts
to show the similarity between certain animals and birds and
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MORE XVIIth-CENTURY ALCHEMISTS

various parts of plants, and also suggests that some pieces of
apparatus used by alchemists were so called from their re¬
semblance to creatures. Thus, he compares the flower of the
daisy to the human eye, and its root to the crayfish; the arum

THE ORIGIN OF THE PELICAN

Della Porta (1583)

THE MATRASS LIKENED
TO AN OSTRICH

Della Porta (1583)

lily to the uterus; the sweet-pea to the butterfly; the snap¬
dragon to a calf’s head ; the flower of fennel to the crest of a pea¬
cock; larkspur to a crested lark; and the leaf of the thistle to a
webbed foot. He likens the alembic of the alchemist to a pranc¬
ing bear; the matrass to an ostrich with outstretched neck ; the
retort to a wild goose ; and the pelican to the long- necked bird
of that name.

His chief work, De Distillationibus , was printed in Rome
in 1608, and contains many woodcuts depicting the apparatus
used in distillation. He also wrote a treatise on Natural Magic ,
which passed through many editions, and performed numerous
optical experiments, in the course of which he invented the
camera obscura. He died in 1615.

215