The lure and romance of alchemy / by C.J.S. Thompson.

  • Charles Thompson
Date:
[1932]
Catalogue details

Licence: In copyright

Credit: The lure and romance of alchemy / by C.J.S. Thompson. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Shansi; Arab traders settled in China, and there was frequent intercourse by sea between China and the Persian Gulf. There is a curious legend concerning a Chinese alchemist and philosopher named Wei-po-Yang, who flourished in the second century and wrote a treatise on a preparation called the Pills of Immortality, which after prolonged study he is said to have ultimately succeeded in making. He administered one of his pills as an experiment to a dog, but unfortunately the animal speedily succumbed to the effects, whereupon he swallowed a pill himself and he also died. His elder brother, who still had a firm faith in the pills, now took a dose, but he too fell down dead. These terrible results not unnaturally shook the con¬ fidence of a younger brother, and he resolved not to risk his life and went off to make arrangements for the burials. Much to his amazement, he found on his return that all the victims had completely recovered. Thus Wei-po-Yang was enrolled among the immortals. The search for the secret of how to prolong life, which appears to have been the first phase in Chinese alchemy, seems in the early centuries of our era to have developed into a quest for an agent which would be both capable of producing an elixir of life and a means of transmuting metals. The seekers after this knowledge had a curious resemblance to those who practised alchemy in the West. There were those who had a genuine and unselfish interest in the science—largely recluses or anchorites who pursued their studies in the solitudes of the mountains; there were others who, seeking personal glory and wealth, fre¬ quented the Imperial Courts. According to a Chinese writer, the former class sought the following: “Eight precious things —cinnabar, orpiment, realgar, sulphur, saltpetre, ammonia, empty green [an ore of cobalt], and mother-of-clouds [a variety of mica].” The philosophers considered that base metals might be trans¬ muted into the precious ones by the dual method of eliminating the more material qualities in their composition and of augment- 5i
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