* Alchemy

Unless you've been bewitched, you've probably already heard about Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince, the sixth book in the ongoing boy wizard saga. Due for release at midnight tonight, the book has already sold more than 2 million copies (through preorders) and spent half a year atop Amazon's bestseller list. Of course, tales about wizards and witchcraft have been capturing imaginations for ages. They even helped inspire history's most famous would-be wizards: the alchemists.


About Alchemy


At any minute, the average alchemist hoped to mix a potion that would give him eternal life, godlike powers, or maybe a lump of gold to trade at the local exchange. In the end, alchemists invented chemistry, not magic, but you can't blame them for trying.

Ancient Chinese Secret

No one knows for sure where alchemy originated, but China is a pretty good bet, since mystical religious writings from as far back as the 4th century BC hint at using drugs to create life-extending elixirs. At the time, Chinese religion had little to say about an afterlife, so, hey, carpe diem and, while you're at it, pass the immortality potion. Taoist writings, peppered with mysticism already, quickly absorbed alchemical doctrines, most of them obscure recipes for the "elixir of life."

Unsurprisingly, the eternal-life elixir proved elusive--even deadly, although that didn't stop ambitious alchemists from producing more than 1,000 recipes. One of the earliest theories held that since gold resists corrosion, a drink made from gold might help the body resist old age. Other versions called for the addition of arsenic, mercury, and a host of other toxic ingredients.

Unsuspecting emperors downed the lethal concoctions, and died like flies. In fact, 20th-century British historian Joseph Needham was able to put together a long list of Chinese rulers who had been poisoned by elixirs. After several centuries of egregious malpractice, the Asian search for earthly immortality more or less faded away.

It's Gold, Baby, Gold!

Eternal life has its appeal, but western alchemists lusted mainly after gold. The idea of turning lead into gold grew out of an older, less controversial art: dyeing minerals to make brightly colored objects. Ancient Greek papyrus scrolls suggest that potters mixed sulfur with minerals to produce dazzling metallic hues. The process wasn't just for shiny bowls, either. Nothing said "ready for war" like dazzling armor. Some historians think that Homer's description of Achilles' decorated shield indicates that advanced chemical coloring techniques were used as far back as the 8th century BC.

Changing the appearance of solid matter was a neat trick, and the dyeing recipes made a big impression, especially on opportunistic types. In the 3rd century BC, a Nile Valley resident named Bolos of Mende made a sensation when he penned Physica et mystica, a new collection of dyeing recipes that sounded a lot like the old papyrus cookbook--except that Bolos claimed he could produce real gold and silver, not just dyes.

Later alchemists, such as Zosimos of Panopolis, refined Bolos's techniques, adding distillation methods and setting up the careful procedure that would become the basis for real chemistry. Their language, however, remained maddeningly obscure. Zosimos speaks of "ennobling base metals" to gold by "killing" (corroding) them, then "resurrecting" (coloring) them with "spirits" (possibly sulfur water).

Zosimos was the first alchemist to advance the concept of the philosopher's stone, a substance that could act on a mineral and bring about an instant transmutation. Because the substance was always inorganic--a powder or mineral salt--alchemists teasingly called it a "stone." By the Middle Ages, the philosopher's stone was commonly assumed to be the focus of alchemy. He who possessed it could turn lead into gold at will.

A Spoonful of Acid Helps the Medicine Go Down

In 1382, the Parisian official Nicolas Flamel insisted he had created gold with the help of a mystical Hebrew text. Flamel was full of it, but his contemporaries had actually begun to discover something useful: nitric, hydrochloric, and sulfuric acids--all highly corrosive substances with serious scientific promise. Meanwhile, monks began tapping alchemy for medicine, applying what they'd learned while translating alchemical texts to create herbal and mineral curatives for every ailment under the sun.

In the 15th century, the German-Swiss doctor Philippus Aureolus Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim--mercifully known as Paracelsus--became the first outspoken champion of natural medicines, including alchemical potions. After denouncing most of his alchemical colleagues as charlatans, Paracelsus embarked on a very public one-man campaign to turn alchemical quacks into altruistic chemists interested in finding cures for the full spectrum of human maladies.

Of course, some still tried to make gold. As late as the 17th century, Isaac Newton experimented with the idea, to no avail. But sovereigns were quick to punish (or hire) those who might alter the value of royal coffers. In 1603, Saxon king Christian II jailed and tortured the Scotsman Alexander Seton, who had been demonstrating "transmutations" for the public's entertainment. By the 19th century, Victorian chemists put an end to all the speculation: the only way to get very rich very quick was to rob a bank.

Claire Vail
July 15, 2005