….about Alchemy.

For years people have been trying to use science to enhance their lives. Using what they have known of the properties of everything surrounding them, people have looked towards science to help them accomplish such goals as making everyday tasks easier, saving lives or simply finding new ways to amass personal wealth. This has been going on for years, and still is. During one period of history (c. 1400-1650), alchemy sprang up as another way for people to harness science for their goals.

The traditional way of looking at alchemy is to picture a wild-haired medieval sorcerer-type scientist in a tall stone tower mixing various potions from assorted glassware, trying his best to change everyday common metals into gold. While there were certainly some of those stereotypical alchemists, the study of alchemy consisted of much more than that. Although alchemy began out of the desire to change metals into gold and to produce a mystical “elixir of life,” it was more than that. Alchemy was a way of looking at various elements in the earth and what they were made up of.

According to alchemy, all matter is composed of three main “principles:” mercury, sulfur and salt. Much of this was borrowed from Arabic science. It was similar to Aristotle’s idea of the four elements. (earth, fire, wind and water) Alchemy was a step ahead of the four elements in one thing: the alchemical principles were actual elements or compounds, still recognizable on a modern periodic table. Aristotle’s elements were abstract, and nobody could ever find a sample of pure earth or pure fire.

Alchemy theorized that metals were formed slowly within the earth when the right amount of these three principles came together. This idea seemed to make sense, because most naturally occurring elements were found in the earth as metal sulfides. Alchemists could easily identify sulfur due to its unique smell when burned.

The different proportions of these three principles in elements would supposedly account for some of its physical properties. An abundance of mercury would make the substance be volatile and easily melt, while sulfur would bring with it combustibility.

Under this system of thought, it was perfectly reasonable for scientists to believe that they could turn any metal into gold. By their theories, gold formed in the ground slowly from other metals. If the alchemist could speed up the process by controlling the amount of sulfur, mercury of salt that the metal came into contact with, chances are that somewhere along the line the metal would change into another metal.

Looking back on this, one may begin to wonder why it was not completely obvious to alchemists that their entire system of thought was flawed. They spent 200 years trying to transmute metals into gold and never did. Do they never give up? One reason they kept going is that some metals they actually did succeed in transmuting.

Lead sulfide (called galena) occurs naturally in the earth. In its natural state, it is metallic and looks little like lead. When heated in the presence of oxygen, however, it gives off gasseous sulfur oxide and leaves behind pure melted lead. An alchemist observing this reaction would interpret it as the metal galena being transmuted into lead by taking away some of the sulfur that was in the lead.

Sometimes, small amounts of silver or gold would exist in the ore samples that alchemists would use. Alchemists would heat these ore samples, removing the predominant metal in the sample and ending up with a small quantity of the valuable metal. This also lead alchemists to believe they were transmuting metals into silver or gold, only serving to further more research in the field.

As time went on, probably due to a lack of results, interests in alchemy began to erode. With new advances in science, most notably the acceptance of mass as an important factor in an experiment, research was conducted that proved alchemy’s basic principle theory to be false. There was a small revival of interest in alchemy when radioactivity was discovered to change properties of elements—some saw this as true transmutation—but this subsided as knowledge in modern chemistry and physics progressed.

Although alchemy never saw its primary goal of turning an ordinary metal into gold accomplished, much of the studies that alchemy did left behind useful knowledge. Even though the period of alchemy was considered a dark age scientifically, it saw strides forward and led to some important studies.

-Phil Hagelberg, 2000