alchemy the parent of chemistry.

learning in europe was greatly advanced by the foundation of the famous monastery of monte cassino, by st. benedict, near naples, in the year 529. the religious houses of this order, of which monte cassino was the parent, were the means of sheltering in those troublous times the men who devoted themselves to literature and secular learning, as well as to the severities of the religious life. in these peaceful abodes men learned how to make the desert blossom as the rose, agriculture and other civilizing occupations were studied and successfully practised, and from the sixth century to the ninth such medical knowledge as existed in europe chiefly emanated from these abodes of piety, industry, and temperance. missionaries issued from them to convert and civilize the nations; and wherever the monks went, they acted as the healers of the sick, as well as the spiritual advisers of the sinner. everywhere they cultivated medicinal plants, whose properties they learned to understand; by interchange of thought and comparison of opinions every monastery, with its constant going and coming of the brethren, became an exchange of knowledge: the science of spain was carried to italy, that of italy to france and england, which in their turn contributed to the general stock of information such items of knowledge as they possessed. “if science,” says schlegel,721 “was then of a very limited range, it was still quite proportioned to the exigencies and intellectual cultivation of the age; for mankind cannot transcend all the degrees of civilization by a single bound, but must mount slowly and in succession its various grades.”

alcuin (735-804), the great reviver of learning in the eighth century, was an ecclesiastic who instructed charlemagne and his family in rhetoric, logic, mathematics, and divinity. “france,” says a great writer, “is indebted to alcuin for all the polite learning it boasted in that and the following ages. the universities of paris, tours, fulden, soissons, and many others, owe to him their origin and increase.” by301 the benefits he obtained from charlemagne for the christian schools which he founded, education began to revive in europe, and by the emperor’s command schools were established in every convent and cathedral throughout his vast empire, wherein not clerics alone, but the sons of the nobility who were destined for a secular life, could receive the highest education at that time attainable. “the monasteries became a kind of fortress in which civilization sheltered itself under the banner of some saint; the culture of high intelligence was preserved there, and philosophic truth was reborn there of religious truth. political truth, or liberty, found an exponent and a defender in the monk, who searched into everything, said everything, and feared nothing. without the inviolability and the leisure of the cloister, the books and the languages of the ancient world would never have been transmitted to us, and the chain which connects the past with the present would have been snapped. astronomy, arithmetic, geometry, civil law, physic and medicine, the profane authors, grammar, and the belles lettres, all the arts, had a succession of professors uninterrupted from the first days of clovis down to the age when the universities, themselves religious foundations, brought science forth from the monasteries. to establish this fact it is enough to name alcuin, anghilbert, eginhard, treghan, loup de terrières, eric d’auxerre, hincmar, odo of clugny, cherbert, abbon, fulbert.”722

the origin of chemistry.

the great importance of the science of chemistry in its connection with that of medicine, compels some allusion to its origin. without question alchemy was the forerunner of chemistry. beginning in the search for the means of transmuting base metals into gold, it ultimately endowed us with a far more precious knowledge—the art of preparing many of our most valuable medicines.

the first authentic account of alchemy is an edict of diocletian about a.d. 300, in which a diligent search is ordered to be made in egypt for all the ancient books which treated of the art of making gold and silver, that they might be destroyed. this shows that the pursuit must have been of great antiquity. fable credits solomon, pythagoras, and hermes amongst its adepts. we find nothing more about it till its revival by the arabians some five or six hundred years later.723

the word alchemy is mentioned for the first time by the byzantines. the art of transmuting metals under the name of chemia, is first spoken of by suidas, who wrote in the tenth century. the byzantines began302 to make chemical experiments about the seventh century; all the books they quote were attributed to hermes. what is known as the hermetic philosophy was synonymous with alchemy, but the books were really the work of the monks of the period.724

the earliest works on alchemy which we possess are those of geber of seville, who lived probably about the eighth or ninth century. his works were entitled of the search of perfection, of the sum of perfection, of the invention of verity. he divided metals into the more or less perfect, gold the most perfect, silver the next, etc. his aim was to convert inferior metals into gold; that which should turn base metals into gold would be also a universal medicine, would cure or prevent diseases, prolong life, and make the body beautiful and strong. the philosopher’s stone would embrace in itself all perfections. alchemy led to chemistry; it is even declared by some to have been the mother of chemistry. some have thought that without the hope of making gold and other precious things, men would never have been inspired to investigate the secrets of nature and sustained in the arduous and often dangerous work of the chemist. but this is to take far too low a view of the scientific mind in all ages. the search for truth, the passion for investigating and interrogating nature has happily never wholly depended upon mercenary motives, and men have devoted their lives as ardently to scientific researches, by which they could never have hoped to gain a single penny, as did those alchemists of old, who bent over their crucibles in the vain search for the perfect magistery.725

gibbon says,726 “the science of chemistry owes its origin and improvement to the industry of the saracens. they first invented and named the alembic for the purposes of distillation, analysed the substances of the three kingdoms of nature, tried the distinction and affinities of alkalis and acids, and converted the poisonous minerals into soft and salutary medicines.” gibbon somewhat exaggerates. analysis and affinity were discovered at a much later period. it was europeans in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries who advanced chemical science towards its present high position.

nonnus (10th century) wrote “a compendium of the whole art of medicine,” in 290 chapters. it is a mere compilation, and the author is only worthy of remembrance in medical history as the earliest greek medical writer who mentions distilled rose-water, an article originally derived from the arabians.