How Did Alchemy Create Chemistry?

Alchemists may have never turned lead into gold, but they did create the field of chemistry. Learn how the study of alchemy worked in this episode of BrainStuff. 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:01):
Welcome to brain Stuff production of iHeart Radio. Hey brain Stuff.
Lauren bog obamb here with a question, But when you
think of alchemy, do you imagine wizards brewing up concoctions
of bat wings and blood? Historians would have you reconsider.
Most researchers see alchemy not as fodder for Harry Potter
stories and wikin ceremonies, but as the forerunner of modern

(00:24):
science and particularly chemistry. Some of these people might have
been among the best scientific minds of their eras blazing
trails that led to scientific insights all over the world.
Alchemy was, at its core away for inquisitive minds to
explore the way the world worked, attempting to decipher nature's
functions and leverage them for various purposes. To achieve those ends,

(00:46):
alchemists theorized it was necessary to purify the body, spirit,
and mind. People who practiced alchemy were searching for ways
to a produce elixirs which would hopefully cure all kinds
of diseases and be turn base metals like lead into
precious ones like gold via some yet to be found
substance called the Philosopher's Stone. We spoke via email with

(01:08):
Peter Baxwell Stewart, who teaches history at the University of
St Andrew's in Scotland. He explained the Chinese were particularly
interested in the first search, the Western Europeans in the second.
From the first centuries CE, China and India were practicing
a form of alchemy. Europeans widely practiced alchemy during the
Middle Ages, which was roughly one thousand CE through Fife,

(01:31):
though the practice continued afterwards, waning through the eighteen hundreds
but extending all the way into the twentieth century, thanks
in part to beliefs that ultimately went back to Aristotle
and the Greek philosophers. Alchemists thought that nature was always
striving to perfect itself, and since gold was considered the
perfect metal in part because it doesn't rest or tarnish,
it was regarded as the end all be all of medals.

(01:53):
There was an idea that because it was so perfect,
all other medals would eventually turn into gold given enough time,
due to some unknown natural process. So the alchemist was
seeking to speed up this natural process in the laboratory.
Maxwell Stewart said, given the basic assumptions of their belief systems,
the alchemists endeavors were entirely rational theoretically, to alchemical experimentation

(02:17):
might give an insight into God's intentions in creating the
universe the way he did with their boiling cauldrons and
intricate crucibles. Alchemists, who were predominantly but not exclusively men,
exhibited a willingness to experiment, a trial and error mentality
that explored multiple disciplines and hope of illuminating nature's intricacies
through honest scholarship and research. Alchemists tinkered with chemical processes

(02:40):
like dies and perfumes, and of course, also found ways
to change the properties of various alloys. One didn't attend
any kind of university to learn these skills. Instead, the
knowledge of master alchemists was transferred to apprentices under a
shroud of secrecy. Because that knowledge was so powerful, alchemists
wrote and obscure symbols, co and metaphors to protect their

(03:01):
ideas and insights. Despite all the mystery, not all the
experiments were bogus. One Lawrence Principal, a chemist in science
historian at Johns Hopkins University, decided to recreate a medieval
alchemy experiment, one that he hoped would conjure a Philosopher's Tree,
a structure that was thought to be a precursor to
the Philosopher's Stone. He blended gold and mercury into a flask,

(03:23):
which he then placed under warm sand in his lab.
Days later, he was astonished to see that the recipe
had in fact worked, generating a golden tree like structure
that would have undoubtedly drawn even more awe. Centuries ago,
these kinds of wonders may not have been possible if
not for the work of countless alchemists of yore, who
often used techniques like sublimation and distillation that would be

(03:45):
familiar to any modern chemist. Swiss physician Paracelsus was one
famous alchemist from the sixteenth century. Part profit, part metallurgist,
part doctor, he became known as the world's first toxicologist
because he realized the correlation between dosage and toxicity, that
poisons and small doses might be helpful to humans, while
larger doses could be fatal. In his work, Paracelsis gave

(04:09):
rise to the concept of making clinical medical diagnoses and
then treating conditions with specific medicines. During the seventeenth century,
British inventor, philosopher and scientist Robert Boyle wished to find
the secret of the Philosopher's Stone, which, in the alchemic tradition,
was the most powerful force in nature. That power, he
thought was a key to the secrets of the universe.

(04:29):
Although Boyle is best known today for pioneering the scientific
method and for the law named after him, he was
enamored with alchemy all of his life. Boyle's law, by
the way, says that the volume of a gas varies
inversely with pressure. At the same time, Boyle was hard
at work. Isaac Newton, that guy who gave shape to
the laws of gravity and optics, was actively involved in alchemy.

(04:50):
For decades. He pursued alchemic secrets that he felt were
perhaps even more fundamental than gravity. He hoped that in
teasing out the chemical and mineral makeup of the world,
scientists could perhaps find the one true essence of nature,
thereby wielding immense power. With its roots divided between philosophical, religious, mystical,
and scientific pursuits, alchemy eventually ran into the buzza of

(05:12):
rational thinking that developed during the Age of Enlightenment. It's
secretive tendencies drew suspicions from the government and the church,
and the associations with the occult didn't help either, As such,
alchemy faded into obscurity, leaving behind a reputation colored by
charlotteanisibon quackery. It's no wonder that ancient people's first gaped
at the perceived power of alchemists, and later as more

(05:35):
refined scientific methods took hold, began to mock them. But
with their legitimate chemical experimentations and applications, alchemists had already
made their mark, paving the way for modern chemistry. Maxwell
Stewart said experimentation almost inevitably resulted in the discovery of
various substances hitherto either unknown or not understood. Phosphorus is

(05:56):
an obvious example, and so that aspect of alchemy leads
into modern chemistry. One particularly famous aspect of that chemistry
is distillation, including distilling alcohol from sugary bruise into wine
or beer, and then into liquors. Today's episode was written

(06:17):
by Nathan Chandler and produced by Tyler Clang. Brain Stuff
is a production of iHeart Radio's How Stuff Works. For
more on this and lots of other distilled topics, visit
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