WEBVTT - How Alchemy Worked 0:00:01.440 --> 0:00:04.920 Welcome to Stuff You Should Know, a production of iHeartRadio. 0:00:11.119 --> 0:00:13.640 Hey, and welcome to the podcast. I'm Josh, and there's 0:00:13.880 --> 0:00:16.479 Chuck and Jerry's here too, and we are here to 0:00:16.600 --> 0:00:20.840 enchant you in this very special episode Stuff You Should Know, 0:00:21.680 --> 0:00:25.040 which we'd like to also call the Facts of Life too. 0:00:26.640 --> 0:00:30.240 Yeah. I mean alchemy. I think a very appropriate topic, 0:00:30.440 --> 0:00:34.240 taking something mundane and turning it into something fantastic. 0:00:35.000 --> 0:00:37.400 Oh yeah, I guess we are kind of alchemists in 0:00:37.400 --> 0:00:39.760 that sense. Where were you talking about a different podcast? 0:00:39.800 --> 0:00:42.400 No, no, no, let's talk about what but I aim 0:00:43.200 --> 0:00:44.200 to accomplish today. 0:00:45.040 --> 0:00:48.080 Hey man, not only do you aim it, you are 0:00:48.159 --> 0:00:50.200 aimed for it. You hit it right on the head. 0:00:50.640 --> 0:00:53.440 Yeah, alchemy, Baby, let's do it. 0:00:53.560 --> 0:00:57.080 What is the attempted a compliment? Yeah? Well yeah, when 0:00:57.120 --> 0:01:01.000 we're talking about alchemy or alchemists, for me at least, 0:01:01.040 --> 0:01:03.800 and I would assume most people kind of conjures images 0:01:03.840 --> 0:01:08.320 of like some magician wearing like a robe with stars 0:01:08.319 --> 0:01:11.280 and moons on it, maybe even a pointy hat to match. Sure, 0:01:12.440 --> 0:01:15.679 he's lit by candlelight, he's in a strange little laboratory. 0:01:15.840 --> 0:01:19.560 He's doing all sorts of weird stuff to basically create 0:01:19.600 --> 0:01:22.280 some sort of magical potion or do something like that. Right, 0:01:23.120 --> 0:01:25.200 if you know a little more about it, maybe you 0:01:25.280 --> 0:01:30.120 think of Charlatans who trick people into investing in their 0:01:30.240 --> 0:01:34.679 alchemical schemes of turning you know, lead into gold. But 0:01:35.600 --> 0:01:37.680 it turns out that there's a lot more to it 0:01:37.720 --> 0:01:41.040 than I ever realized, and the people involved were. 0:01:42.360 --> 0:01:42.440 Not. 0:01:42.920 --> 0:01:45.520 They were a lot more interesting and a lot less 0:01:46.000 --> 0:01:50.440 dumb and fraudulent than history is kind of cast the mass. 0:01:50.840 --> 0:01:55.000 Yeah. I always thought of alchemy as just from what 0:01:55.120 --> 0:01:57.800 I knew as a youngster, which was just turning something 0:01:58.480 --> 0:02:00.960 like a boring metal into gold, like you were talking about. 0:02:01.800 --> 0:02:05.000 But it is I think interesting that modern science now 0:02:05.040 --> 0:02:07.160 looks back and say and says, hey, you know what 0:02:08.120 --> 0:02:10.400 I mean. Sure, it was a lot of bunk and 0:02:10.480 --> 0:02:15.440 bs involved, but some of the foundations of modern chemistry 0:02:15.520 --> 0:02:18.680 were there, even though that wasn't their intention. Really. 0:02:19.639 --> 0:02:21.760 Yeah, and you can also make a pretty strong case 0:02:21.840 --> 0:02:24.480 that the alchemists were the ones who laid the groundwork 0:02:24.520 --> 0:02:25.760 for the scientific method. 0:02:25.880 --> 0:02:26.079 Yeah. 0:02:26.400 --> 0:02:29.480 Wow. What's cool about it too, is that, you know, 0:02:29.600 --> 0:02:33.800 the Europeans, the medieval European you know, monks and sages 0:02:33.840 --> 0:02:36.520 and scholars are the ones you typically think of at 0:02:36.560 --> 0:02:39.160 least in the West when you think of alchemy, but 0:02:39.280 --> 0:02:42.600 it's a I don't want to say worldwide, but it 0:02:42.760 --> 0:02:45.600 really kind of ties together traditions from a bunch of 0:02:45.639 --> 0:02:50.600 different parts of the world into a mad pursuit for 0:02:50.960 --> 0:02:56.079 immortality and glory. Yeah, tots, So we should say that 0:02:56.560 --> 0:02:59.320 you can kind of trace the Western tradition of alchemy 0:02:59.680 --> 0:03:03.240 the Europeans as you think of it, all the way 0:03:03.240 --> 0:03:06.880 back to Egypt. Egypt was like the starting point for 0:03:06.919 --> 0:03:11.120 the Western tradition, but Egypt even seemed to get it 0:03:11.120 --> 0:03:16.000 from other places. Specifically, even back before Egypt, it seems 0:03:16.000 --> 0:03:19.560 like China and India were possibly in on the pursuit 0:03:19.639 --> 0:03:23.040 for immortality, which seems to be the thing that initially 0:03:23.080 --> 0:03:24.760 gave alchemy like its birth. 0:03:24.919 --> 0:03:26.920 Yeah, and they may have called it like, you know, 0:03:27.040 --> 0:03:29.960 the art or something like that, or maybe maybe you know, 0:03:30.080 --> 0:03:31.800 some other word that they had that meant, you know, 0:03:31.840 --> 0:03:35.320 some sort of transformation might be taking place. The word 0:03:35.360 --> 0:03:39.520 alchemy itself was first used in Arabic and then eventually 0:03:39.520 --> 0:03:43.840 French and English and medieval times. But yeah, I think 0:03:43.880 --> 0:03:46.120 it's interesting that it followed that route, and it's also 0:03:46.200 --> 0:03:50.200 not surprising that, you know, China was one of the 0:03:50.240 --> 0:03:52.160 first to get involved in something like this, because I 0:03:52.160 --> 0:03:56.360 feel like any time we're talking about ancient practices, China 0:03:56.400 --> 0:03:58.400 always seems to be sort of leading the way in 0:03:58.400 --> 0:03:59.119 one way or the other. 0:03:59.800 --> 0:04:03.440 Indeed, one of the reasons China was so heavy into 0:04:03.520 --> 0:04:10.320 it was because the early alchemical like pursuits or purposes 0:04:10.360 --> 0:04:14.240 were to create an elixir for immortality. The reason they 0:04:14.280 --> 0:04:17.520 cared so much about that was because the country had 0:04:17.520 --> 0:04:21.800 a huge Taoist population, and Daoism is very much interested 0:04:21.839 --> 0:04:26.360 in achieving immortality one way or another. And so China 0:04:26.839 --> 0:04:31.680 and it's alchemists put together mercury, arsenic sulfur and said, here, 0:04:31.760 --> 0:04:35.360 drink this a lot of times. And surely a lot 0:04:35.440 --> 0:04:37.800 of people died from drinking those things, right, I mean, 0:04:37.839 --> 0:04:41.480 you can't drink a concoction of mercury and still, you know, 0:04:41.839 --> 0:04:43.719 just wipe your mouth with the back of your hand 0:04:43.760 --> 0:04:47.000 and walk off, like time to get to work, you know. 0:04:47.279 --> 0:04:49.200 Yeah, I'm sure, I'm sure there were some people that 0:04:49.240 --> 0:04:55.920 suffered under alchemy experiments over time. But they also, you know, 0:04:56.040 --> 0:04:59.280 on the other side, and this is sort of the 0:04:59.279 --> 0:05:02.160 the plus and minus side of some of these experiments, 0:05:02.200 --> 0:05:05.440 they also whether or not purposefully or not, gave us 0:05:05.560 --> 0:05:10.200 things we still use today, like you know, potassium nitrate. 0:05:10.400 --> 0:05:14.400 So they sort of accidentally discovered gunpowder and ammonium chloride, 0:05:15.000 --> 0:05:18.279 which is used today as nitrogen and fertilizer like for 0:05:18.440 --> 0:05:19.479 farms and stuff like that. 0:05:20.000 --> 0:05:22.719 Mh. So, yeah, there were that is kind of a 0:05:22.760 --> 0:05:25.560 tradition in alchemy of you know, they're trying to do 0:05:25.640 --> 0:05:27.880 something else, but they still found useful stuff that we 0:05:27.960 --> 0:05:32.320 still you know, make her use today. In China's whole 0:05:32.400 --> 0:05:34.920 jam with alchemy kind of started to dry up as 0:05:34.960 --> 0:05:38.800 Buddhism spread throughout the country because Buddhism is much more 0:05:38.839 --> 0:05:43.200 focused on rebirths and mellowing out about the whole immortality thing, 0:05:43.800 --> 0:05:47.039 and so the pursuit of you know, immortality through special 0:05:47.040 --> 0:05:50.280 elixir just kind of became a moot point or a 0:05:50.320 --> 0:05:51.400 moot point. Sorry. 0:05:52.000 --> 0:05:54.880 Uh yeah, I mean I guess the Buddhists were like, yeah, 0:05:54.920 --> 0:05:57.039 maybe it's really not possible to live forever. Maybe we 0:05:57.040 --> 0:05:58.919 should set our goals a little more. 0:05:58.760 --> 0:06:02.520 Reasonably, right, let's just pretend like we don't care about 0:06:02.560 --> 0:06:03.240 living forever. 0:06:03.760 --> 0:06:08.400 As far as India goes, they were also not seeking immortality, 0:06:08.480 --> 0:06:12.880 and they were also kind of like post Buddhists China, 0:06:13.040 --> 0:06:15.240 like let's try and promote health, let's try and cure 0:06:15.279 --> 0:06:19.359 some disease. Maybe we can try and transfer something into gold. 0:06:20.480 --> 0:06:22.560 But you know, you'll see that kind of popping up. 0:06:22.560 --> 0:06:24.440 That's why I think a lot of people the first 0:06:24.440 --> 0:06:27.440 thing they think of is turning something into gold, because 0:06:27.440 --> 0:06:29.599 that was the pursuit of a lot of alchemists, because 0:06:29.640 --> 0:06:33.000 gold was so revered either as like, you know, the 0:06:33.760 --> 0:06:38.400 best metal, Go ahead and make your white snake joke. 0:06:40.080 --> 0:06:42.360 I wasn't going to. I was just thinking of gold 0:06:42.360 --> 0:06:44.520 wearing a T shirt that was the best metal. 0:06:44.800 --> 0:06:50.360 Yeah, like the Devil's hands, the devil horns fingers, and 0:06:51.000 --> 0:06:53.840 you know, also thinking like you know, perhaps like drinking 0:06:53.880 --> 0:06:57.800 something that maybe liquid gold but it's really not liquid 0:06:57.800 --> 0:07:00.360 gold that just turned the color gold could make you 0:07:00.560 --> 0:07:02.080 healthier or maybe live forever. 0:07:02.880 --> 0:07:05.640 Yeah, And in India they were trying to make gold 0:07:05.720 --> 0:07:07.680 nut to get rich, but because like you were saying, 0:07:07.720 --> 0:07:10.800 they were trying to balance health, restore health, like it 0:07:10.840 --> 0:07:13.720 was just associated with healthy living essentially gold was. 0:07:13.960 --> 0:07:15.160 Yeah. 0:07:15.520 --> 0:07:18.840 So then we reached the Mediterranean, that was another ancient 0:07:18.920 --> 0:07:23.640 place and by the time Alexander the Great invaded Egypt 0:07:23.720 --> 0:07:29.600 in three twenty two BCE. They found pretty quickly that 0:07:29.640 --> 0:07:33.240 the Egyptians had already been developing their own tradition of 0:07:33.280 --> 0:07:36.200 alchemy for a while, and the Greek said, Hey, I 0:07:36.360 --> 0:07:39.600 like your style. Let's mix together our philosophy and our 0:07:39.680 --> 0:07:43.880 understanding of physics and astrology with your alchemy, and let's 0:07:43.920 --> 0:07:47.440 produce something really great that medieval monks are really going 0:07:47.520 --> 0:07:48.280 to go nuts for. 0:07:48.640 --> 0:07:50.480 Yeah, And I think this is like, I know we're 0:07:50.480 --> 0:07:52.720 going to say this quite a bit, but I think 0:07:52.760 --> 0:07:57.560 they were these early scientists were taking a stab at something, 0:07:57.720 --> 0:08:01.280 you know, like sure there were Charlatans and stuff like that, 0:08:01.360 --> 0:08:03.800 but this was so early on in the game, like 0:08:05.160 --> 0:08:07.360 science is brand new, and they were like, hey, let's 0:08:07.360 --> 0:08:10.520 try this thing and see if it works out. And 0:08:10.560 --> 0:08:13.680 maybe didn't always follow modern best practices, but you can't 0:08:13.680 --> 0:08:16.000 expect them to either. So like, I don't know, I 0:08:16.040 --> 0:08:20.320 feel like over time on this podcast period, we've kind 0:08:20.320 --> 0:08:22.720 of tried to shine a little bit of light on 0:08:22.760 --> 0:08:24.440 some of this stuff. Is like, hey, they were doing 0:08:24.480 --> 0:08:27.680 their best back then, trying to get trying to get 0:08:27.680 --> 0:08:30.120 involved in science at least, right. 0:08:29.960 --> 0:08:32.360 At least they were doing something you lazy sad. 0:08:32.240 --> 0:08:34.480 Yeah, exactly. I mean this is when the first books 0:08:34.480 --> 0:08:37.840 on it came out. That was one called The Translation 0:08:37.960 --> 0:08:40.840 is Natural and Mystical Things by an Egyptian named Bolos 0:08:41.320 --> 0:08:45.000 of Mende, and this is around two hundred BCE. A 0:08:45.040 --> 0:08:48.480 lot of this was again about making you know, valuable 0:08:48.480 --> 0:08:53.040 metals like gold and silver. But again it was the 0:08:53.040 --> 0:08:55.680 first kind of preserved writing that we have on this. 0:08:56.640 --> 0:09:00.160 Yeah, right, no, for sure. And he was also somebody 0:09:00.200 --> 0:09:04.560 who wrote pretty straightforward about alchemy and the recipes and 0:09:04.640 --> 0:09:08.920 the processes, which would come to be very rare. As 0:09:09.000 --> 0:09:13.920 alchemy developed, it became much more secretive. But this Greco 0:09:14.080 --> 0:09:19.960 Egyptian creation, this melding of different traditions to create this 0:09:19.960 --> 0:09:23.480 this specific kind of alchemy it's called Hellenistic alchemy that 0:09:23.600 --> 0:09:27.240 laid the foundation for Western alchemy to come. One of 0:09:27.280 --> 0:09:29.199 the other big things that came out of it, or 0:09:29.240 --> 0:09:32.040 another indicator of how important it was is there was 0:09:32.120 --> 0:09:37.800 this kind of legendary figure that developed among the medieval alchemists, 0:09:37.880 --> 0:09:43.120 the monks. His name was Hermes Trists Megistos. Just a 0:09:43.200 --> 0:09:45.880 great name, not a good hotel check in name, but 0:09:46.480 --> 0:09:47.520 it's a it's a great name. 0:09:47.600 --> 0:09:52.360 Regardless how many times. Are you gonna hear that? 0:09:52.840 --> 0:09:54.680 Right? And you would say it just like that too, 0:09:54.720 --> 0:10:00.920 like real uncertain and unsteady like Hermes. I think. So 0:10:01.080 --> 0:10:03.800 it was a combination, a straight up combination of Thoth 0:10:04.040 --> 0:10:07.360 or Toth I think both the Egyptian god who invented writing, 0:10:07.360 --> 0:10:10.280 the one with the ibis bird head, yeah, and Hermi's 0:10:10.360 --> 0:10:12.520 the Greek messenger of the gods. Like this was a 0:10:12.600 --> 0:10:19.480 complete syncret syncretization of those two, and later medieval monks 0:10:19.679 --> 0:10:24.520 would describe like alchemical text to having been written by Hermi's. 0:10:24.080 --> 0:10:26.640 T Yeah, Hermi's t that's a that's a better check 0:10:26.679 --> 0:10:29.920 in named by far? Is that t acer or t ee? 0:10:31.000 --> 0:10:34.280 I think it means like Hermi's third. The best I 0:10:35.040 --> 0:10:37.719 think is what tris megistos translates to. 0:10:38.040 --> 0:10:39.800 All right, that's pretty good. 0:10:39.880 --> 0:10:42.079 And this is this is one of those episodes to 0:10:42.240 --> 0:10:45.320 chuck where when we say words we might accidentally cause 0:10:45.360 --> 0:10:48.280 somebody to go poof and write something either appears or disappears, 0:10:48.320 --> 0:10:50.480 So everybody'd be prepared for something to vanish. 0:10:50.559 --> 0:10:52.760 Yeah, I agree. Uh, And no one knew it that, 0:10:52.840 --> 0:10:55.440 you know, Like when you look back on stuff like this, 0:10:55.559 --> 0:10:57.440 it's kind of hard to parse out like who was 0:10:58.000 --> 0:11:00.319 who was first, who was influencing who is sort of 0:11:00.360 --> 0:11:04.200 spread around the world. There's is a theory that India's 0:11:04.240 --> 0:11:08.920 belief system was basically just sort of brought over as 0:11:08.920 --> 0:11:11.040 a maybe not as a book, but you know, brought 0:11:11.040 --> 0:11:16.079 over wholesale from proto Arians in Central Asia, and they 0:11:16.080 --> 0:11:19.160 were in the area between four and five thousand years ago. 0:11:19.320 --> 0:11:21.960 So it's you know, I don't know if there's a 0:11:21.960 --> 0:11:23.920 lot to be gained from sort of debating who was 0:11:23.960 --> 0:11:25.640 coming up with what first, you know. 0:11:25.960 --> 0:11:30.240 Right, yeah, yeah, I mean it doesn't really matter. It's 0:11:30.400 --> 0:11:33.440 those historians. They're kind of fixated around that kind of thing. 0:11:34.320 --> 0:11:36.600 But you know, it is interesting to wonder, like where 0:11:36.679 --> 0:11:39.560 culture came from because so much of it influences so 0:11:39.640 --> 0:11:42.360 much else. It's not just in alchemy but in all 0:11:42.400 --> 0:11:47.240 things basically. But you mentioned Bolos of Mende, and he 0:11:48.160 --> 0:11:52.800 actually came after the guy who the Western tradition of 0:11:52.840 --> 0:11:55.680 alchemy is kind of like based on, Like this guy 0:11:55.840 --> 0:11:57.920 was the guy he's like, here's how it's done, and 0:11:57.960 --> 0:12:00.880 this is the ground rules for alchemy. Hey, everybody, his 0:12:01.000 --> 0:12:04.839 name was those the most of Panopolists, and those of 0:12:04.840 --> 0:12:07.520 the most of Panopolists wrote something like twenty eight books 0:12:07.559 --> 0:12:10.400 on alchemy. And for a while they're like, we've only 0:12:10.440 --> 0:12:12.440 got a couple of letters of this guy, but we 0:12:12.520 --> 0:12:16.600 knew he was brilliant. Apparently they've been finding his stuff 0:12:16.640 --> 0:12:21.600 all over the Arabic world in libraries that they didn't 0:12:21.640 --> 0:12:23.400 realize they had it before. But a lot of his 0:12:23.480 --> 0:12:25.640 writings have recently been rediscovered. 0:12:25.880 --> 0:12:27.680 Yeah, and his stuff. He's another one of those that 0:12:27.720 --> 0:12:30.080 was pretty detailed in his writing and to have like 0:12:30.160 --> 0:12:34.360 stuff like this preserved is pretty amazing. He was because 0:12:34.400 --> 0:12:38.080 he was an alchemist obviously transforming metals or you know, 0:12:38.160 --> 0:12:41.800 trying to transform metals. But he, like I said, he 0:12:41.880 --> 0:12:44.840 was pretty specific. He would have write ups on like 0:12:44.880 --> 0:12:47.200 exactly what tools he was using, on what methods he 0:12:47.320 --> 0:12:51.120 was using. A lot of this stuff was obviously repurposed 0:12:51.120 --> 0:12:54.600 from the kitchen, like kind of cooking stuff or maybe 0:12:54.679 --> 0:12:58.520 craft work, not the band, but you know crafting and 0:12:59.000 --> 0:13:02.480 like like a bedazzle, yeah, like a dazzler or perfume making. 0:13:02.679 --> 0:13:04.640 And he credited a lot of this stuff with a 0:13:04.720 --> 0:13:08.600 Jewish woman named Maria, and he was like, you know 0:13:08.679 --> 0:13:11.200 a lot, I've taken a lot of her methods and 0:13:11.280 --> 0:13:14.240 a lot of her methods also transferred over to early 0:13:14.360 --> 0:13:19.560 methods of cooking, like you know, French and Italian cooking methods. 0:13:19.960 --> 0:13:22.319 Yeah, like a water bath, a bomb Marie or a 0:13:22.400 --> 0:13:25.480 bonyo Maria is you know, like you know when you 0:13:25.480 --> 0:13:27.880 melt chocolate chips in a pan that's inside a pan 0:13:28.080 --> 0:13:30.200 that has water in it. Yeah, so you don't scorch it, 0:13:30.320 --> 0:13:34.280 right exactly. You can thank the Jewish woman named Maria 0:13:34.360 --> 0:13:37.880 who has lost a history aside from Zozimosa Panopolis's writings, 0:13:37.880 --> 0:13:39.320 but she apparently taught him. 0:13:39.480 --> 0:13:41.760 Yeah, and he said, hey, you can use a lot 0:13:41.760 --> 0:13:44.360 of this stuff to not make gold from lead. 0:13:45.520 --> 0:13:48.600 Yeah. I mean he definitely came up with some processes 0:13:48.960 --> 0:13:50.840 that he figured out himself. And like you said, these 0:13:50.840 --> 0:13:53.080 people were taking a stab at it. They were like, 0:13:53.120 --> 0:13:55.800 what happens if I do this, and what happens if 0:13:55.800 --> 0:13:57.960 I if I try that same thing with a different 0:13:57.960 --> 0:14:00.640 metal or a different powder or something like that. So 0:14:00.679 --> 0:14:04.439 they were experimenting. They were starting the beginnings of experimentation 0:14:04.920 --> 0:14:07.440 that would lead to what we understand it as a science. 0:14:07.800 --> 0:14:09.880 Those of most was doing this like he was one 0:14:09.880 --> 0:14:13.559 of the first to do this. I also saw a definition. 0:14:13.640 --> 0:14:15.040 I'm not sure if I sent it to you or not. 0:14:15.320 --> 0:14:18.080 But he had an explanation or a definition of what 0:14:18.440 --> 0:14:20.960 alchemy is. He said it was the study of the 0:14:21.000 --> 0:14:26.920 composition of waters, movement, growth, embodying and disembodying, drawing the 0:14:26.960 --> 0:14:31.040 spirit from bodies, and bonding the spirits within bodies. And 0:14:31.080 --> 0:14:32.560 what are you saying, Like, if you stop and think 0:14:32.600 --> 0:14:36.240 about it, it's actually pretty comprehensible. Yeah, He's saying. Alchemy 0:14:36.320 --> 0:14:39.560 is the study of all the things we've observed about 0:14:39.560 --> 0:14:41.840 the world around us, trying to figure out how that 0:14:41.880 --> 0:14:44.440 stuff works, Like how does a soul come into a 0:14:44.480 --> 0:14:46.720 body and become attached to it, how does it leave 0:14:46.760 --> 0:14:50.280 it after death? What's the deal with water? That kind 0:14:50.280 --> 0:14:54.160 of stuff. So like it was just them seeking to apply, 0:14:55.520 --> 0:15:00.120 essentially a proto scientific understanding of the world as they understood. 0:14:59.680 --> 0:15:02.440 It, Like what happens if I distilled this thing down 0:15:02.480 --> 0:15:06.320 to its base form or create you know, you're gonna 0:15:06.360 --> 0:15:09.200 hear a lot of talk about vapors, like you know, 0:15:09.720 --> 0:15:12.600 boil something or heat something to create a vapor and 0:15:12.640 --> 0:15:15.560 then smash it together with this thing. And now I've 0:15:15.640 --> 0:15:17.560 just learned you know, I'm trying to make gold maybe, 0:15:17.880 --> 0:15:22.080 but I've all of a sudden discovered that it changes 0:15:22.160 --> 0:15:25.040 properties of both materials if I combine these two things. 0:15:25.320 --> 0:15:27.000 And while they may not have understood what the heck 0:15:27.080 --> 0:15:29.840 that meant, chemistry later on would say, oh, actually what 0:15:29.880 --> 0:15:32.560 they were doing was this right exactly. 0:15:32.840 --> 0:15:37.320 Yeah, So this whole jam that was laid down by 0:15:37.440 --> 0:15:42.960 Zosimos and Bolos and the early Egyptians who eventually kind 0:15:42.960 --> 0:15:46.560 of combine their stuff with the Greek understanding of the world, 0:15:46.560 --> 0:15:51.200 which is really important because Aristotle's thoughts about you know, 0:15:51.320 --> 0:15:55.200 what made matter up, like earth, wind, fire, and air, 0:15:55.320 --> 0:15:58.800 the four elements, that was the understanding of the world 0:15:58.800 --> 0:16:01.880 that they were working. They were trying to figure things 0:16:01.880 --> 0:16:05.400 out within that context. So Aristotle had a huge contribution 0:16:05.520 --> 0:16:08.920 to alchemy early on, which is science would later kind 0:16:08.960 --> 0:16:14.120 of decide was just a huge wrong turn at the outset, 0:16:14.400 --> 0:16:18.400 especially considering that Democritis, who was around around the same 0:16:18.400 --> 0:16:20.920 time as Aristotle, remember him, he was the one who's like, 0:16:20.960 --> 0:16:23.040 everything's made up of atoms. I just am not going 0:16:23.080 --> 0:16:24.400 to use the word Adams yet. 0:16:24.320 --> 0:16:28.680 Right exactly. Good place for a break, yeah, I think so, 0:16:29.040 --> 0:16:31.240 all right, we'll take a break and we'll talk a 0:16:31.240 --> 0:16:33.680 little bit about the move into Europe. Right after this. 0:16:55.400 --> 0:16:58.200 Okay, Chuck. So things were just kind of hanging around 0:16:58.640 --> 0:17:03.640 from you know, three hundreds BCE, where the Egyptians and 0:17:03.680 --> 0:17:05.560 the Greeks that kind of come together and created that 0:17:05.640 --> 0:17:10.080 version of alchemy, and eventually the Arab world started to 0:17:10.320 --> 0:17:13.200 rise and it started to go over here and go 0:17:13.280 --> 0:17:15.480 over there, and wherever it went, it kind of took 0:17:15.560 --> 0:17:18.240 this and that from each culture that it found interesting. 0:17:18.720 --> 0:17:20.720 And one of the things that they did, they showed 0:17:20.760 --> 0:17:23.639 up in Egypt and they said, Hey, I like this 0:17:23.720 --> 0:17:25.840 alchemy stuff you guys have been doing for the last 0:17:25.880 --> 0:17:29.480 few hundred years. Teach that to us. And that actually 0:17:29.520 --> 0:17:34.959 helped lay the groundwork for the incredible amount of learning 0:17:35.000 --> 0:17:37.560 that took place around this time in the Arab world. 0:17:37.840 --> 0:17:42.040 Yeah, and you know, logging stuff describing stuff that would 0:17:42.080 --> 0:17:45.720 later on again, you know, lay the foundation for legit 0:17:45.880 --> 0:17:49.600 chemists of the future. And one of their theories was 0:17:49.640 --> 0:17:53.840 that production of different kinds of matter starts out basically, 0:17:54.080 --> 0:17:58.960 you know, with the basics, which are heat, coldness, dryness, moisture, 0:17:59.080 --> 0:18:01.879 and combining these different ways are going to have different outcomes. 0:18:02.520 --> 0:18:05.919 Like to produce those vapors, you're going to have cold 0:18:06.040 --> 0:18:09.840 water basically, and combine that with some sort of hot 0:18:09.920 --> 0:18:13.879 moist air to create a vapor, and they would you know, 0:18:14.119 --> 0:18:16.359 mix these things together and they would combine it with 0:18:16.840 --> 0:18:20.600 mercury or sulfur or something like that and trying to 0:18:20.640 --> 0:18:22.840 make gold once again, pray. 0:18:23.080 --> 0:18:25.120 I think it's called christiopoia. 0:18:25.560 --> 0:18:28.800 Yeah, that's the technical term I think for trying to 0:18:28.800 --> 0:18:29.200 make gold. 0:18:29.760 --> 0:18:33.800 Yeah, exactly. And there are a couple of big, big names. 0:18:33.840 --> 0:18:35.800 There are a few big names, but two that still 0:18:35.800 --> 0:18:39.320 made it all the way through history. Rosie's who's known 0:18:39.359 --> 0:18:42.240 as the greatest physician of the Muslim world at the time. 0:18:42.800 --> 0:18:46.239 He was an alchemist. A contemporary I believe of his 0:18:46.760 --> 0:18:51.399 named Jabir. He was well known as an early scientist. 0:18:51.520 --> 0:18:55.400 Some people call him the father of chemistry. And these 0:18:55.400 --> 0:18:58.280 guys were they were contributing by saying like, hey, don't 0:18:58.359 --> 0:19:01.600 just throw a handful of powder, something like, you know, 0:19:01.840 --> 0:19:04.520 do a thumbnail and use the same amount every time. 0:19:04.640 --> 0:19:09.720 Just little contributions like that. What was a huge contribution too, 0:19:09.880 --> 0:19:12.560 was that they took a lot of these ancient texts, 0:19:12.680 --> 0:19:16.760 translated them into Arabic, and then those were eventually translated 0:19:16.800 --> 0:19:20.560 into Latin, which is when things started to spread like 0:19:20.720 --> 0:19:23.840 wildfire throughout Europe. In like the twelfth century. 0:19:24.000 --> 0:19:26.280 Yeah, I promised talk of Europe and I just forgot 0:19:26.280 --> 0:19:29.159 we had to stop by Arabia first. But this is 0:19:29.200 --> 0:19:31.359 the beginning in about the twelfth century when it moved 0:19:31.359 --> 0:19:35.360 into Europe. And this was the time when Europe was shifting, 0:19:35.640 --> 0:19:38.960 you know, to a university sort of a more academic 0:19:40.080 --> 0:19:42.640 way of looking at things and away from the monasteries 0:19:42.680 --> 0:19:45.080 who were I guess some of the more early you know, 0:19:45.240 --> 0:19:48.960 science minded people. Yeah, and Christian scholars at the time 0:19:48.960 --> 0:19:51.600 in Europe, they started to become a little more open 0:19:51.680 --> 0:19:54.680 to say, like, hey, maybe we should you know, look 0:19:54.720 --> 0:19:58.320 to other texts, ancient texts, even look from other cultures 0:19:58.359 --> 0:20:00.840 to try and see if we can learn something from them. 0:20:01.600 --> 0:20:06.639 And so they started experimenting with mineral acids, boric acid, 0:20:06.640 --> 0:20:11.840 sulfuoric acid, stuff like that, and trying to develop elixirs. 0:20:11.840 --> 0:20:15.000 And this is where you'll hear more about things like 0:20:15.080 --> 0:20:19.360 you know, immortality, like the elixir of life, Philosopher's Stone, 0:20:19.359 --> 0:20:20.840 which we'll get into and stuff like that. 0:20:21.760 --> 0:20:23.719 Yeah, and we should say, now that I think of it, 0:20:23.760 --> 0:20:26.520 I'll bet a lot of this transfer of knowledge came 0:20:26.520 --> 0:20:29.280 from the Crusades. Europe just showed up and was like, 0:20:29.359 --> 0:20:32.480 give us everything, including all of your books on alchemy. Yeah, 0:20:32.480 --> 0:20:35.520 you know, that would be my guess. But yeah, around 0:20:35.520 --> 0:20:39.040 this time, so I read that the European alchemists, following 0:20:39.040 --> 0:20:43.040 this tradition believed that in the ancient world they had 0:20:43.119 --> 0:20:48.439 already found what was called the Philosopher's Stone, which just 0:20:48.440 --> 0:20:51.280 sounds so cool. Make a really cool like title for 0:20:51.359 --> 0:20:53.680 a Harry Potter book or a Willie the Wizard book 0:20:53.760 --> 0:20:57.240 or something. You know, are you making it Philosopher's Stone? No, 0:20:57.400 --> 0:21:00.600 I think it's just kind of like it's just fit naturally. 0:21:00.600 --> 0:21:00.800 You know. 0:21:00.920 --> 0:21:03.560 Well, that was the original title of the Harry Potter book, 0:21:04.480 --> 0:21:07.760 Sorcerer's Stone. Okay, that's why asked if you were joking. 0:21:08.119 --> 0:21:10.439 Not the Sorcerer's Stone. It's the Philosopher's Stone, wasn't it. 0:21:10.600 --> 0:21:12.840 No, they changed it to the Sorcerer's Stone from the 0:21:12.880 --> 0:21:13.879 Philosopher's Stone. 0:21:14.359 --> 0:21:17.320 What a rip off. Okay, Well, we're talking about the 0:21:17.320 --> 0:21:20.400 philosopher's stone, and that was a term for this substance 0:21:20.480 --> 0:21:23.359 that supposedly was all over the place, But we just 0:21:23.400 --> 0:21:27.200 didn't recognize the magical properties of it that you could 0:21:27.200 --> 0:21:31.520 turn immediately anything into like gold or whatever. The perfect 0:21:31.600 --> 0:21:34.160 version of that thing was because that was the thing. 0:21:34.720 --> 0:21:39.080 Gold to the alchemists was the perfect version of a metal, 0:21:39.600 --> 0:21:43.880 and all other metals, whether it's lead, tin, silver, whatever, 0:21:44.400 --> 0:21:47.639 are we we're seeing them in the process of moving 0:21:47.760 --> 0:21:51.360 naturally into gold. That's how they understood it. What they 0:21:51.400 --> 0:21:53.840 were trying to do is figure out how those processes 0:21:53.920 --> 0:21:57.000 worked so they could speed it up right, yeah, and 0:21:57.080 --> 0:21:59.520 do it. Do it. But like that's where they got 0:21:59.520 --> 0:22:02.160 the idea of taking lead and turning it into gold. 0:22:02.359 --> 0:22:04.359 That's what they were trying to do, was move lead 0:22:04.440 --> 0:22:08.080 into its more perfect natural state, which was gold. And 0:22:08.119 --> 0:22:09.919 the way that they thought you could do that was 0:22:10.040 --> 0:22:13.600 with the Philosopher's stone, which would make that happen automatically. 0:22:13.760 --> 0:22:17.199 Yeah, And you mentioned earlier that they would operate a 0:22:17.200 --> 0:22:19.360 little more in secrecy later on, and this is kind 0:22:19.359 --> 0:22:22.440 of where we are now now. They would operate, maybe 0:22:22.440 --> 0:22:24.840 they would have their apprentices and stuff like that, but 0:22:24.920 --> 0:22:26.800 it was kind of shrouded in secrecy. A lot of 0:22:26.840 --> 0:22:30.640 times they would use like codes and symbols and metaphor 0:22:30.680 --> 0:22:34.840 and stuff when they were like recording their experiments. And 0:22:34.880 --> 0:22:39.600