Title: 1. INTRODUCTION: ALCHEMY ORIGINS
Course: Chemist€ry

Read the following text and explain to your partners. Work in groups.

Write on the blackboard the words you do not the meaning. The teacher will translate them.

In Rome, from 37 to 41 dC, it was said that Caligula emperor would have carried out experiments to produce gold starting from orpiment (aparently arsenium sulphide), and that Diocletian emperor (c.III dC) would have given the order to burn all the Egyptian works concerning the chemistry of gold and silver, in order to stop such kind of experiments.
A school of alchemy flourished in Arabia from 750 to 1258. The first known work resulting from this school is the “Summa Perfectionis” (maximum perfection), attributed to the alchemist and philosopher Abu 'Abd Allah Jâbir Ibn Hayyân al-Sufi (latinized as Geber, c.VIII), nicknamed by his contemporaries "king of the Arabs and The Philosophers Prince". This is the oldest book on chemistry properly said^1. Arab alchemists were fascinated by the concept of metal transmutation and attempted to carry out the process^2. Arab alchemists also worked with gold and mercury, arsenic and sulfur, salts and acids, and became acquainted with a wide range of what we now call chemical reagents^3.

“Magic chemistry”, as happened with the rest of Arab science, was communicated to Europe through Spain, thanks to the impressive flourishing that science and arts experienced in Al-Andalus throughout the middle Ages. The first existing works of European magic chemistry are those of the English Roger Bacon and the germanic philosopher Alberto Magno; both believed in the possibility to transmute lower metals into gold. The idea stimulated the imagination of many people throughout the middle Ages. They thought that silver and mainly gold were the most “perfect” metals compare to the rest, which were considered “imperfects” metals. Therefore, they believed in the famous philosopher's stone, a substance much more perfect than gold, which could be used to bring the most common metals to the perfection of gold. Roger Bacon believed that gold dissolved in aqua regia was the “elixir of life”, also known as the elixir of immortality^3, which is a legendary potion or drink that guaranteed eternal life. We will focus later on in this legendary potion (point 6 of Che-Mist€ry.II).

In the thirteenth century the Italian scholastic philosopher Saint Thomas Aquino, the Majorcan polymath Ramon Llull also contributed much, by the way of magic chemistry, to the progress of chemistry, with their findings of the uses of antimony , the manufacture of amalgams and the isolation of the spirit of wine, or ethyl alcohol. Significant compilations of formulas and techniques of this period include Pyrotechnics (1540), by the Italian metallurgist Vannoccio Biringuccio; about metals (1556), by the Germanic mineralogist Georgius Agricola, and Alquimia (1597), by Andreas Libavius, a naturalist and Germanic chemist. The most famous of all the alchemists was the Swiss Paracelsus, who lived in the 16th century. He maintained that the elements of the composite bodies were salt, sulfur and mercury, which represented earth, air and water respectively. The 16th-century Swiss alchemist Paracelsus believed in the existence of alkahest , which he thought to be an undiscovered element from which all other elements (earth, fire, water, air) were simply derivative forms. Paracelsus believed that this element was, in fact, the philosopher' Stone, the universal medicine and the irresistible solvent.

After Paracelsus, the alchemists of Europe were divided into two sets. The first was composed of those who permanently work on scientific discoveries with compound and reactions. These scientists were the legitimate predecessors of modern chemistry, as announced by the work of French chemist Antoine Lavoisier. The second set accepted the visionary and metaphysical part of the ancient magic chemistry and developed a practice, inspired by imposture, black magic and fraud, from which the current notion of magic chemistry originates^4.

Click the image and WATCH video^2 THE ALCHEMY HISTORY FROM THE VERY BEGINNING

ACTIVITY 1

Answer and complete the folowing questions in activity.1