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Report: Alchemy
Alchemy.
ALCHEMY (Late Latin Alchemia, alchimia, alchymia), a pre scientific direction in chemistry.
The origin of alchemy.
The name goes back through Arabic to the Greek Chemeia from cheo lew, cast, which indicates the connection of alchemy with the art of melting and casting metals.
Another interpretation is from the Egyptian hieroglyph "hmi", which meant black (fertile) land, as opposed to barren sands.
This hieroglyph denoted Egypt, the place where alchemy, which was often called "Egyptian art", may have originated.
For the first time, the term "alchemy" is found in the manuscript of Julius Firmicus, an astrologer of the 4th century.
Connection with chemistry.
The most important task of alchemists was the transformation (transmutation) of base metals into noble (valuable) ones, which was actually the main task of chemistry until the 16th century.
This idea was based on the ideas of Greek philosophy that the material world consists of one or more "primary elements", which under certain conditions can pass into each other.
The spread of alchemy falls on the 4th 16th centuries, the time of the development of not only "speculative" alchemy, but also practical chemistry.
There is no doubt that these two branches of knowledge influenced each other.
It is not for nothing that the famous German chemist Liebig wrote about alchemy that it "has never been anything other than chemistry".
Thus, alchemy relates to modern chemistry in the same way as astrology relates to astronomy.
The task of medieval alchemists was to prepare two mysterious substances with which it would be possible to achieve the desired ennobling (transmutation) of metals.
The most important of these two preparations, which was supposed to have the property of converting not only silver into gold, but also such metals as lead, mercury, etc., was called the philosopher's stone, the red lion, the great elixir.
It was also called the philosopher's egg, red tincture, panacea and life elixir.
This remedy was supposed not only to refine metals, but also to serve as a universal medicine; its solution, the so called golden drink, was supposed to heal all diseases, rejuvenate the old body and lengthen life.
Another mysterious remedy, already secondary in its properties, called white lion, white tincture, was limited to the ability to turn all base metals into silver.
Legends about the origin.
Ancient Egypt is considered the birthplace of alchemy.
The alchemists themselves traced the beginning of their science from Hermes Trismegistus (aka the Egyptian god Thoth), and therefore the art of making gold was called hermetic.
The alchemists sealed their vessels with a seal with the image of Hermes hence the expression "hermetically sealed".
There was a legend that the angels taught the art of turning "simple" metals into gold to earthly women with whom they married, as described in the Book of Genesis and the Book of the Prophet Enoch in the Bible.
This art was described in a book called "Hema".
The Arab scientist al Nadim (10th century) believed that the ancestor of alchemy was Hermes the Great, originally from Babylon, who settled in Egypt after the Babylonian Pandemonium.
There were Greco Egyptian, Arabic and Western European schools of alchemy.
The Roman emperor Diocletian ordered in 296 to burn all Egyptian manuscripts concerning the art of making gold (it was probably about gilding and the art of making fake jewelry).
In the 4th century AD, the problem of converting metals into gold was studied by the Alexandrian school of scientists.
The writer, who spoke under the pseudonym of Democritus, who obviously belonged to the Alexandrian scientists, with his work "Physics and Mysticism" laid the foundation for a long series of alchemical manuals.
In order to ensure success, such works appeared under the names of famous philosophers (Plato, Pythagoras, etc.), but, due to the general obscurity of the style, they are little accessible to understanding.
The largest collection of alchemical manuscripts is kept in the Library of St. Mark in Venice.
Authorities.
The Greeks were the teachers of the Arabs, who gave alchemy a name.
The West adopted alchemy from the Arabs in the 10th century.
In the period from the 10th to the 16th century, famous scientists who left their mark on European science were engaged in alchemy.
For example, Albert the Great, the creator of the work "On Metals and Minerals" , and Roger Bacon, who left the works "The Power of Alchemy" and "The Mirror of Alchemy" to posterity, were also the most famous alchemists of their time.
Arnoldo de Villanova, an outstanding physician who died in 1314, published more than 20 alchemical works.
Raimund Lulli, the most famous scientist of the 13th and 14th centuries, was the author of 500 works of alchemical content, the main of which has the title "Testament, setting out in two books the universal chemical art".
(Many experts believe, however, that Lulli, known for his piety, did not write these works, and they are only attributed to him).
But already at the beginning of the 16th century, Paracelsus claims that the true goal of science is not to find ways to make gold, but to prepare medicines.
This is the end of the" creative " period of European alchemy.
Court alchemy.
In the 15th 17th centuries, many crowned heads were zealously engaged in alchemy.
Such, for example, is the English king Henry VI, during whose reign the country was flooded with counterfeit gold and counterfeit coin.
The metal that played the role of gold in this case was in all probability a copper amalgam.
Charles VII acted in a similar way in France, together with the famous fraudster Jacques le Coeur.
Emperor Rudolf II was the patron of wandering alchemists, and his residence represented the center of alchemical science of that time.
The emperor was called the German Hermes Trismegistus.
Elector August of Saxony and his wife Anna of Denmark performed experiments: the first — in his Dresden "Golden Palace", and his wife — in a luxuriously arranged laboratory at her dacha"Pheasant Garden".
Dresden has long remained the capital of the sovereigns who patronize alchemy, especially at a time when the rivalry for the Polish crown required significant monetary expenses.
At the Saxon court, the alchemist I. Betger, who failed to make gold, discovered porcelain for the first time in Europe.
One of the last adepts of alchemy was Caetan, called Count Ruggiero, a Neapolitan by birth, the son of a peasant.
He acted at the Munich, Vienna and Berlin courts, until he ended his days in 1709 in Berlin on a gallows decorated with tinsel gold.
But even after the spread of chemistry itself, alchemy aroused the interest of many, in particular, I. V. Goethe devoted several years to studying the works of alchemists.
Achievements of alchemists.
From the alchemical texts that have come down to us, it is clear that the alchemists belong to the discovery or improvement of methods for obtaining valuable compounds and mixtures, such as mineral and vegetable paints, glasses, enamels, salts, acids, alkalis, alloys, medicines.
They used such methods of laboratory work as distillation, distillation, filtration.
Alchemists invented furnaces for long term heating, stills.
The achievements of the alchemists of China and India remained unknown in Europe.
Alchemy was not widespread in Russia until the Peter the Great reforms, but almost all Russian alchemists (the most famous of them is Ya. Bruce) are of foreign origin.
List of literature
Materials from the website were used to prepare this work http://schoolchemistry.by.ru/
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