Georgius Agricola

“ There is another class of alchemists who do not change the substance of base metals, but colour them to represent gold or silver, so that they appear to be that which they are not, and when this appearance is taken from them by the fire, as if it were a garment foreign to them, they return to their own character. These alchemists, since they deceive people, are not only held in the greatest odium, but their frauds are a capital offence. ”

“ Of many of the Alchemists mentioned by Agricola little is really known, and no two critics agree as to the commonest details regarding many of them; in fact, an endless confusion springs from the negligent habit of the lesser Alchemists of attributing the authorship of their writings to more esteemed members of their own ilk, such as Hermes, Osthanes, etc., not to mention the palpable spuriousness of works under the names of the real philosophers, such as Aristotle, Plato, or Moses, and even of Jesus Christ. ”

“ I have omitted all those things which I have not myself seen, or have not read or heard of from persons upon whom I can rely. That which I have neither seen, nor carefully considered after reading or hearing of, I have not written about. ”

“ The name Chemistry written in Greek, or Chemia, is so ancient as perhaps to have been used in the antediluvian age. Of this opinion was Zosimus the Panopolite, whose Greek writings, though known as long as before the year 1550 to George Agricola, and afterwards perused . . . . by Jas. Scaliger and Olaus Bofrichius, still remain unpublished in the King of France's library. In one of these, entitled, ' The Instruction of Zosimus the Panopolite and Philosopher, out of those written to Theosebeia, etc. ”

“ Olympiodorus was an Alexandrian of the 5th Century, whose writings were largely commentaries on Plato and Aristotle; he is sometimes accredited with being the first to describe white arsenic (arsenical oxide) . The full title of the work styled “Stephanus to Heracleus Caesar,” as published in Latin at Padua in 1573, was “Stephan of Alexandria, the Universal Philosopher and Master, his nine processes on the great art of making gold and silver, addressed to the Emperor Heraclius.” He, therefore, if authentic, dates in the th Century. ”

“ For that reason, even if the book of Strato existed, from all these sources not one-half of the whole body of the science of mining could be pieced together.
Seeing that there have been so few who have written on the subject of the metals, it appears to me all the more wonderful that so many alchemists have arisen who would compound metals artificially, and who would change one into another. Hermolaus Barbarus, [11] a man of high rank and station, and distinguished in all kinds of learning, has mentioned the names of many in his writings ”

“ He had at hand many writers upon husbandry whom he could follow, in fact, there are more than fifty Greek authors whom Marcus Varro enumerates, and more than ten Latin ones, whom Columella himself mentions. I have only one whom I can follow; that is C. Plinius Secundus, [3] and he expounds only a very few methods of digging ores and of making metals. Far from the whole of the art having been treated by any one writer, those who have written occasionally on any one or another of its branches have not even dealt completely with a single one of them. ”

“ All these alchemists employ obscure language, and Johanes Aurelius Augurellus of Rimini, alone has used the language of poetry. There are many other books on this subject, but all are difficult to follow, because the writers upon these things use strange names, which do not properly belong to the metals, and because some of them employ now one name and now another, invented by themselves, though the thing itself changes not. These masters teach their disciples that the base metals, when smelted, are broken up ”

“ Even their books proclaim their vanity, for they inscribe in them the names of Plato and Aristotle and other philosophers, in order that such high-sounding inscriptions may impose upon simple people and pass for learning. ”

“ He was born in 1454, died in 1493, and was the author of a number of works on medicine, natural history, etc., with commentaries on the older authors. ↑ The debt which humanity does owe to these self-styled philosophers must not be overlooked, for the science of Chemistry comes from three sources—Alchemy, Medicine and Metallurgy. ”