Alchemy: Ancient and Modern

by H. Stanley Redgrove

Being a Brief Account of the Alchemistic Doctrines, and Their Relations, to Mysticism on the One Hand, and to Recent Discoveries in Physical Science on the Other Hand; Together with Some Particulars Regarding the Lives and Teachings of the Most Noted Alchemists

Alchemy: Ancient and Modern, by the English chemist H. Stanley Redgrove, is a short account of alchemical doctrine written for readers who suspected there was more in it than fraud. Redgrove first asks what alchemy meant, weighing the view that it was purely a spiritual discipline against the plain evidence that alchemists sought to make gold, and explains its theory of matter: the four elements, the sulphur-mercury-salt doctrine, the growth of metals and the links with astrology. He then sketches the lives and teachings of noted alchemists before and after Paracelsus, and traces how chemistry emerged from their work. A last chapter asks whether the discovery of radioactivity had revived the idea of transmutation. The full text is available to read online in your browser on Vinteuil, and the first chapter is free.