Speaker 1: Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff.
Speaker 1: Lauren bog obamb here with a question, But when you
Speaker 1: think of alchemy, do you imagine wizards brewing up concoctions
Speaker 1: of bat wings and blood? Historians would have you reconsider.
Speaker 1: Most researchers see alchemy not as fodder for Harry Potter
Speaker 1: stories and wikin ceremonies, but as the forerunner of modern
Speaker 1: science and particularly chemistry. Some of these people might have
Speaker 1: been among the best scientific minds of their eras blazing
Speaker 1: trails that led to scientific insights all over the world.
Speaker 1: Alchemy was, at its core away for inquisitive minds to
Speaker 1: explore the way the world worked, attempting to decipher nature's
Speaker 1: functions and leverage them for various purposes. To achieve those ends,
Speaker 1: alchemists theorized it was necessary to purify the body, spirit,
Speaker 1: and mind. People who practiced alchemy were searching for ways
Speaker 1: to a produce elixirs which would hopefully cure all kinds
Speaker 1: of diseases and be turn base metals like lead into
Speaker 1: precious ones like gold via some yet to be found
Speaker 1: substance called the Philosopher's Stone. We spoke via email with
Speaker 1: Peter Baxwell Stewart, who teaches history at the University of
Speaker 1: St Andrew's in Scotland. He explained the Chinese were particularly
Speaker 1: interested in the first search, the Western Europeans in the second.
Speaker 1: From the first centuries CE, China and India were practicing
Speaker 1: a form of alchemy. Europeans widely practiced alchemy during the
Speaker 1: Middle Ages, which was roughly one thousand CE through Fife,
Speaker 1: though the practice continued afterwards, waning through the eighteen hundreds
Speaker 1: but extending all the way into the twentieth century, thanks
Speaker 1: in part to beliefs that ultimately went back to Aristotle
Speaker 1: and the Greek philosophers. Alchemists thought that nature was always
Speaker 1: striving to perfect itself, and since gold was considered the
Speaker 1: perfect metal in part because it doesn't rest or tarnish,
Speaker 1: it was regarded as the end all be all of medals.
Speaker 1: There was an idea that because it was so perfect,
Speaker 1: all other medals would eventually turn into gold given enough time,
Speaker 1: due to some unknown natural process. So the alchemist was
Speaker 1: seeking to speed up this natural process in the laboratory.
Speaker 1: Maxwell Stewart said, given the basic assumptions of their belief systems,
Speaker 1: the alchemists endeavors were entirely rational theoretically, to alchemical experimentation
Speaker 1: might give an insight into God's intentions in creating the
Speaker 1: universe the way he did with their boiling cauldrons and
Speaker 1: intricate crucibles. Alchemists, who were predominantly but not exclusively men,
Speaker 1: exhibited a willingness to experiment, a trial and error mentality
Speaker 1: that explored multiple disciplines and hope of illuminating nature's intricacies
Speaker 1: through honest scholarship and research. Alchemists tinkered with chemical processes
Speaker 1: like dies and perfumes, and of course, also found ways
Speaker 1: to change the properties of various alloys. One didn't attend
Speaker 1: any kind of university to learn these skills. Instead, the
Speaker 1: knowledge of master alchemists was transferred to apprentices under a
Speaker 1: shroud of secrecy. Because that knowledge was so powerful, alchemists
Speaker 1: wrote and obscure symbols, co and metaphors to protect their
Speaker 1: ideas and insights. Despite all the mystery, not all the
Speaker 1: experiments were bogus. One Lawrence Principal, a chemist in science
Speaker 1: historian at Johns Hopkins University, decided to recreate a medieval
Speaker 1: alchemy experiment, one that he hoped would conjure a Philosopher's Tree,
Speaker 1: a structure that was thought to be a precursor to
Speaker 1: the Philosopher's Stone. He blended gold and mercury into a flask,
Speaker 1: which he then placed under warm sand in his lab.
Speaker 1: Days later, he was astonished to see that the recipe
Speaker 1: had in fact worked, generating a golden tree like structure
Speaker 1: that would have undoubtedly drawn even more awe. Centuries ago,
Speaker 1: these kinds of wonders may not have been possible if
Speaker 1: not for the work of countless alchemists of yore, who
Speaker 1: often used techniques like sublimation and distillation that would be
Speaker 1: familiar to any modern chemist. Swiss physician Paracelsus was one
Speaker 1: famous alchemist from the sixteenth century. Part profit, part metallurgist,
Speaker 1: part doctor, he became known as the world's first toxicologist
Speaker 1: because he realized the correlation between dosage and toxicity, that
Speaker 1: poisons and small doses might be helpful to humans, while
Speaker 1: larger doses could be fatal. In his work, Paracelsis gave
Speaker 1: rise to the concept of making clinical medical diagnoses and
Speaker 1: then treating conditions with specific medicines. During the seventeenth century,
Speaker 1: British inventor, philosopher and scientist Robert Boyle wished to find
Speaker 1: the secret of the Philosopher's Stone, which, in the alchemic tradition,
Speaker 1: was the most powerful force in nature. That power, he
Speaker 1: thought was a key to the secrets of the universe.
Speaker 1: Although Boyle is best known today for pioneering the scientific
Speaker 1: method and for the law named after him, he was
Speaker 1: enamored with alchemy all of his life. Boyle's law, by
Speaker 1: the way, says that the volume of a gas varies
Speaker 1: inversely with pressure. At the same time, Boyle was hard
Speaker 1: at work. Isaac Newton, that guy who gave shape to
Speaker 1: the laws of gravity and optics, was actively involved in alchemy.
Speaker 1: For decades. He pursued alchemic secrets that he felt were
Speaker 1: perhaps even more fundamental than gravity. He hoped that in
Speaker 1: teasing out the chemical and mineral makeup of the world,
Speaker 1: scientists could perhaps find the one true essence of nature,
Speaker 1: thereby wielding immense power. With its roots divided between philosophical, religious, mystical,
Speaker 1: and scientific pursuits, alchemy eventually ran into the buzza of
Speaker 1: rational thinking that developed during the Age of Enlightenment. It's
Speaker 1: secretive tendencies drew suspicions from the government and the church,
Speaker 1: and the associations with the occult didn't help either, As such,
Speaker 1: alchemy faded into obscurity, leaving behind a reputation colored by
Speaker 1: charlotteanisibon quackery. It's no wonder that ancient people's first gaped
Speaker 1: at the perceived power of alchemists, and later as more
Speaker 1: refined scientific methods took hold, began to mock them. But
Speaker 1: with their legitimate chemical experimentations and applications, alchemists had already
Speaker 1: made their mark, paving the way for modern chemistry. Maxwell
Speaker 1: Stewart said experimentation almost inevitably resulted in the discovery of
Speaker 1: various substances hitherto either unknown or not understood. Phosphorus is
Speaker 1: an obvious example, and so that aspect of alchemy leads
Speaker 1: into modern chemistry. One particularly famous aspect of that chemistry
Speaker 1: is distillation, including distilling alcohol from sugary bruise into wine
Speaker 1: or beer, and then into liquors. Today's episode was written
Speaker 1: by Nathan Chandler and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff
Speaker 1: is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For
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