I have just finished writing the Author’s Note for Alchemy and Meggy Swann, and I am surprised by how much I have learned about alchemy by writing the book. If I am ever on Jeopardy and alchemy is a category, I am a sure winner—except I will probably forget to phrase my answer in the form of a question and be disqualified.
Alchemy and Meggy Swann takes place in Elizabethan England, but alchemy was not an Elizabethan, or even European, invention; people over the globe and over the centuries searched for the secrets of the universe. Alchemy is based on the idea that the world is composed of four elements: fire, air, earth, and water. The 8th century Islamic alchemist Geber analyzed each element in terms of four basic qualities of hotness, coldness, dryness, and moistness. He theorized that every metal was a combination of these four principles and so reasoned that the transmutation of one metal into another could be effected by the rearrangement of its basic qualities. To do this, one would need the help of the philosopher’s stone, a magical substance capable of turning lumps of inexpensive metals into gold. It was also believed to be an elixir of life, or panacea, useful for healing, for rejuvenation, and possibly for achieving immortality. It is said that many alchemists tested their discoveries on themselves and died of mercury, silver, or lead poisoning.
Alchemists, of course, never turned base metal to gold. They did invent procedures, processes, and equipment that showed later generations how to analyze minerals and metals and make medicines from them, how to distill essences, how chemical changes follow from combining different substances, how to use balances and weights, and how to build and use a variety of laboratory vessels. Alchemy’s significant advances laid the basis for the science of chemistry.
