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.

    98/300 page 80
    As no record can be found of any Abbot of Westminster called John Cremer, both of these stories are probably ficti¬ tious. Lully is said to have written a treatise on the Emerald Tablet, and in some of the works attributed to him methods of making nitric acid are described, together with its action on certain metals. He is also said to have made alcohol by distillation and to have known how to dehydrate it by the aid of potassium carbonate, which he obtained by calcining cream of tartar. He also recorded methods of making various tinctures and of obtain¬ ing essential oils from plants. In a fourteenth-century manu¬ script attributed to him, and now in the library of the Escorial, a list of the various names and synonyms of the substances used in his time are recorded. In his later years he again devoted himself to missionary work and left Rome, where he had been living, to preach the Gospel in Africa. He w'as seventy-seven years of age when he landed at Bugia or Bona, in Algeria, to begin his mission, but, according to the story, he so irritated the Mohammedans when he landed by cursing their Prophet that they stoned him and left him to die on the seashore. His religious activities are still recorded in the island of his birth, and he left behind him a following of believers, the Lullists, who after a time spread over Europe. Another alchemist of the mystical type was Thomas Aquinas, a man of deep religious principles. He entered the Order of the Dominicans early in life, and later studied under Albertus Magnus at Cologne and Paris. Of his work little is known, but from his writings it may be judged that he was averse from fraud and trickery. Like other alchemists of his time, he knew that there were substances that could make metals white, and that there were others, like sulphur and arsenic, that could give them a golden hue. Thus he says: “Add to copper some white sublimated arsenic and you will see the copper turn white. If you then add some pure silver you transform all the copper into
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