Martinon-Torres 2011 Recent Developments in Historiography of Alchemy

ambix, Vol. 58 No.
3, November, 2011, 215–37
Some Recent Developments in the

Historiography of Alchemy
Marcos Martinón-Torres
Published by Maney Publishing (c) Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry
UCL Institute of Archaeology, London, UK
The number of researchers and publications devoted to the history of

alchemy has seen exponential growth and diversification in recent decades,
to such an extent that some scholars speak of a “New Historiography of
Alchemy.” On the occasion of the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Society for
the History of Alchemy and Chemistry, this paper outlines some highlights
of the literature since 1990, with a view to identify current trends but also
challenges for the future. Some of the most important changes identified
are a marked awareness of the risks of presentism, a shift from ambitious
histories to contextualised microhistories, a heightened recognition of
the internal diversity of historical alchemy, and a greater emphasis on its
practical dimensions and its role in the Scientific Revolution. Among
the challenges, the paper underscores the potential risks of an excessive
historiographical fragmentation, the need for further interdisciplinary
training and cooperation, and the responsibilities of alchemy historians
towards students and the general public alike.
Introduction
In July 2006, about 150 delegates participated in the International Conference on the
History of Alchemy and Chemistry held at the Chemical Heritage Foundation in
Philadelphia.1 This very successful event was widely acclaimed as the first of its kind
in nearly twenty years.2 After this, scholars interested in the history of alchemy had
to wait only two years for an equally well attended follow-up conference, which took
place in Madrid.3 The next major international conference on alchemy took place
1
Selected conference papers were published as Chymists and Chymistry: Studies in the History of Alchemy and
Early Modern Chemistry, ed. L. M. Principe (Sagamore Beach, Mass.: Science History Publications, 2007).
2
The main scholarly meeting devoted to alchemy before the Philadelphia conference took place in Groningen,
Holland, in 1989. See Z. R. W. M. von Martels, ed., Alchemy Revisited: Proceedings of the International
Conference on the History of Alchemy at the University of Groningen, 1989, Collection de Travaux de
l’Academie Internationale d’Histoire des Sciences 33 (Leiden: Brill, 1990).
3
The conference took place in El Escorial (Madrid), 7–12 September 2008. Some conference papers were
published in Chymia: Science and Nature in Medieval and Early Modern Europe, ed. M. López Pérez, D. Kahn
and M. Rey Bueno (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholars Publishing, 2010).
© Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry 2011 DOI 10.1179/174582311X13129418299063
216 MARCOS MARTINÓN-TORRES
in Cambridge in September 2011,4 but keen scholars had plenty of opportunity

to engage in discussion around the history of alchemy in the intervening period:
in 2010 alone, there were workshops and conference sessions regarding alchemy in
Cambridge,5 Budapest,6 Aberdeen,7 Paris,8 Amsterdam,9 Berlin10 and Lille,11 to name
but a few. Quantifying scholarly output in the social sciences is particularly difficult,
but gross qualitative indicators can be found: for example, a frequency histogram of
the term “alchemy” in publication titles archived in JSTOR dated from 1960 to 2000
shows a steady growth (Figure 1).12 A similar trend can be seen if one browses recent
issues of journals such as Ambix and Isis, or the newer journals Aries, Azogue, and
Early Science and Medicine. Even Science has recently included a popular article
entitled “The Alchemical Revolution.”13 Clearly, the history of alchemy is enjoying
something of a renaissance, and, with the popularity of alchemy in the mass media
rising and so much academic work yet to be done, this trend is unlikely to slow down
in the near future.
Considering the remarkable volume of research taking place in this field, the
seventy-fifth anniversary of the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry
seems an appropriate occasion to take stock of some of the ongoing developments,
not only to celebrate past and recent achievements, but also, perhaps, to identify
remaining caveats and suggest pointers for future enquiry. This paper presents a
modest attempt to review some of the most significant developments in the
historiography of alchemy in the last twenty years. Considering the sheer richness
and complexity of the literature, a thorough review would demand time, expertise
and insight well beyond what this reviewer can offer. Therefore, this paper can
only purport to present some highlights, skewed by the perspective of someone
who is most familiar with current research on late medieval and early modern
transmutational alchemy published in English. Although an attempt will be made
to acknowledge some significant contributions to other research areas, such as the
medical applications of alchemy, and work published in European languages other
than English, there is no ambition to provide an exhaustive bibliographical guide, and
4
International Conference “Alchemy and Medicine from Antiquity to the Enlightenment,” 22–24 September
2011, University of Cambridge.
5
SHAC Graduate Workshop on the History of Alchemy and Chemistry. University of Cambridge, 8 January
2010.
6
International workshop: “On the Fringes of Alchemy.” Medieval Studies Department, Central European
University, Budapest, 8–11 July 2010.
7
Panel “The Practice of Medieval and Early Modern Alchemy,” at the BSHS Annual Conference 2010.
University of Aberdeen, 22–25 July 2010.
8
Workshop “Questioning ‘Occult’ Sciences.” Université Paris 7, 16 June 2010.
9
“Alchemy: Between Science and Religion,” ESSWE Thesis Workshop. University of Amsterdam, 24 June
2010.
10
Workshop “Scientific Objects and their Materiality in the History of Chemistry.” Max Planck Institute for the
History of Science, Berlin, 24–26 June 2010.
11
“Chimie et alchimie: continuités et ruptures.” Seminar series on “Histoire de la chimie aux XVIIe et XVIIIe
siècles.” Universite de Lille, November 2010 to May 2011.
12
http://www.jstor.org (accessed 20 October 2010).
13
S. Reardon, “The Alchemical Revolution,” Science 332 (2011): 914–15.
SOME RECENT DEVELOPMENTS IN THE HISTORIOGRAPHY OF ALCHEMY 217
figure 1 Frequency histogram for the number of papers containing the term “alchem-”
published between 1960 and 2004 and stored in JSTOR. Note that many journals do not
appear in JSTOR until a few years after their publication, so post-2000 publications are likely
to be underrepresented here.
many deserving authors and publications will not, accordingly, receive the detailed
treatment that their contributions merit.14
Twenty years in a snapshot

A word cloud is a visual depiction of a cluster of words, where the size of each word
reflects the number of times that it appears in a given text. Word or tag clouds are
often used to illustrate the content of websites, based on the tags or keywords most
frequently used to describe their various pages, or simply based on the word content
of a given site. However, they are useful in other forms of textual analysis, for
example to assess and visually display the main emphasis of a given speech through
the identification of recurrent terms. In order to provide a starting point for this
review, I tried to generate word clouds that could encapsulate some of the leading
14
Somewhat more descriptive bibliographical guides up to 2005 are included in Chemical History: Reviews of
the Recent Literature, ed. C. A. Russell and G. K. Roberts (Cambridge: Royal Society of Chemistry, 2005).
Of particular relevance are the introductory essay by the editors (“Getting to Know History of Chemistry,”
1–18) and N. G. Coley’s chapter on “Chemistry before 1800” (19–48). For reviews up to the 1980s, see: A. G.
Debus, Science and History: A Chemist’s Appraisal (Coimbra: Universidade de Coimbra, 1984); and A. G.
Debus, “From the Sciences to History: A Personal and Intellectual Journey,” in Experiencing Nature: Proceed-
ings of a Conference in Honor of Allen G. Debus, ed. P. H. Theerman and K. H. Parshall (Dordrecht:
Kluwer, 1997), 237–80. An exhaustive bibliographical compilation is offered by A. Pritchard, Alchemy: A
Bibliography of English-Language Writings (http://www.alchemy-bibliography.co.uk) (accessed 1 April 2011).
themes in the scholarly study of alchemy during different periods, hoping to identify
continuities and ruptures. The source of underlying data for the generation of the
word clouds shown in this paper is JSTOR. For each of the periods covered, a search
was performed for all of the publications including words with the root “alchem-”
anywhere in the text. The results were arranged in order of relevance (i.e. weighed
by aspects such as the frequency of the term in the papers, and its appearance in
paper titles), and the top entries were selected: five hundred each for the decades
1930–1940 and 1960–1970, and one thousand for 1990–2010. The paper and journal
titles, as well as the author names, were subsequently fed into Wordle, an online tag
cloud generator.15 Common words such as articles and prepositions were removed
from the clouds, in addition to terms related to botany (given the surprising abun-
dance of plant names that include our term of interest), and other uninformative
words such as “book,” “study,” and “society”. Needless to say, the resulting pictures
have a strong Anglo-American bias, and they are by no means comprehensive
or representative of the whole discipline — with Ambix constituting one notable
exclusion. However, they provide a reasonably large sample to allow for some first
impressions, as suggested by the comparison that follows.16
Starting with the 1930s (Figure 2), some of the most conspicuous terms, after
“Science” and “History,” are “Philosophy” and “Matter.” The image thus denotes an
interest of alchemy historians in early theories of matter, consistent with the rather
abstract elucubrations of much early scholarship. Also featured are “Philology”
and “Literature,” albeit in smaller font size. Interestingly, the term “Alchemy” is
significantly smaller here than in the word clouds for the 1960s and, especially, for
1990–2010. This is because most of the publications included, even though they may
tangentially address alchemical topics, do not generally focus exclusively on alchemy
and thus do not refer to it in their titles. Among the authors who can be identified
figure 2 Word cloud for “alchemy” in JSTOR, 1930–1940.
15
http://www.wordle.net (accessed 1 April 2011).
16
Although JSTOR is an archive of periodical publications, these frequently include book reviews, so the impact
of published books is also reflected here.
by their surnames are Lynn Thorndike, Julius Ruska, Tenney Davis, George Sarton,
and Frances Siegel — the latter two partly owing to their regular publication of
critical bibliographies of the history and philosophy of science. In terms of geograph-
ical regions, besides the predictable “English” and “American” (probably inflated by
their repetition in journal titles), the most remarkable terms are “Chinese,” “Asiatic,”
and “Arabic.” The only recognisable European flavour is provided by the repeated
mention of Roger Bacon.
If we fast-forward to the 1960s (Figure 3), the situation appears to have changed
significantly. The geographical and chronological foci have shifted to the late
medieval and early modern period in Europe, with terms such as “Renaissance,”
“Modern,” “Jacobean,” and “Elizabethan.” This trend is accompanied by a marked
preponderance of works on language and literature, with Shakespeare, Ben Jonson,
and Chaucer’s Canon’s Yeoman’s Tale, among others, featuring in rather large fonts.
These literary works, famously scornful of the stereotypical greedy or fraudulent
alchemist, have been greatly influential in a narrow understanding of alchemy with a
long-lasting impact. Leaving these approaches aside, the names of some important
scholars can be picked out: Nathan Sivin, whose work largely explains the persistence
of the term “Chinese” in the cloud; “Hall,” recognising both Marie Boas Hall and A.
Rupert Hall; and Carl Jung. Other terms, such as “Religion,” “Folklore,” “Technology,”
and “Culture,” feature more prominently in the 1960s than they did in the 1930s,
partly owing to Jungian influence on the historiography of alchemy over this period.
The most immediately striking feature of the word cloud for the last twenty
years is the sheer size of the term “Alchemy,” which is notably larger than “History,”
“Science,” or any other word in the image (Figure 4). By now, alchemy has become
a subject of study in its own right, and as such it features in numerous publication
titles. In order to facilitate the reading of the otherwise very small words, the three

above terms were removed, and the remaining words recast in a new cloud
(Figure 5). Here, interest in the Renaissance and early modern periods appears to have
crystallised, and thematic keywords are more diverse: “Literature” is still a prominent
term, but so is “Scientific Revolution,” as well as “Medicine,” “Experimental,”
“Technology,” “Magic,” “Gold,” and “Culture”; significantly, “Chymistry” has
newly appeared. “Religion,” “Language” and “Philosophy” do appear, but in
comparatively smaller sizes than in previous decades. According to the cloud, the
authors chiefly responsible for the recent developments include William Newman,
Lawrence Principe, Bruce Moran, Pamela Smith, and Tara Nummedal. These and
other scholars have focused on figures such as Robert Boyle, Isaac Newton, George
Starkey, and Simon Forman, who also feature in the cloud. “Ben Jonson,” however,
has shrunk considerably.
The 1990–2010 word cloud thus provides a few interesting indicators to help
us locate some of the recent developments in the historiography of alchemy. These
aspects will be addressed in the following sections, together with a few others, which,
for reasons such as the partial coverage of JSTOR or their very recent nature, did not
make it into the cloud but are still deemed worthy of consideration.17
Alchemy, chemistry, and chymistry

A review of the recent historiography on alchemy ought to start with what is arguably
the most seminal and widely cited paper in the literature of the last two decades. This
is none other than William R. Newman and Lawrence M. Principe’s “Alchemy vs.
Chemistry: The Etymological Origins of a Historiographic Mistake,” published in
17
It should be noted that many journals operate a “moving wall,” whereby articles are only made available on
JSTOR a few years after they have been published. Thus, although my search covered the whole period, the
sample for 2005–2010 is probably even less representative than the rest.
figure 5 Word cloud for 1990–2010, after removal of the terms “Alchemy,” “History,” and
“Science.”
1998.18 In this article, Newman and Principe take a fresh look at the old topic of the
relationship between alchemy and chemistry, once again revisiting the etymology, but
combining it with a historiographical review. They make the strong claim that,
prior to the eighteenth century, the terms “alchemy” and “chemistry” were largely
synonymous; when discrimination was made between the two, this was generally
based on contingent criteria that were individual to each author and different from
the present ones.19 Newman and Principe therefore contend that it may be pointless
and anachronistic to explore the relationships between, say, early modern alchemy
and chemistry, as such studies would tend to perpetuate an artificial cleft between
“the esoteric” and “the scientific” that is set a priori and does not apply to the period
concerned. Importantly, this claim does away with much traditional scholarship that
sought to tell the history of chemistry as a long struggle of light and reason over the
obscurity and superstition of alchemy. Newman and Principe’s paper can be read in
combination with a follow-up publication, printed in 2001, in which two important
points are made: first, they restate that alchemy was much more than the quest for
the Philosophers’ Stone, and that gold-making was indeed just one activity within a
18
W. R. Newman and L. R. Principe, “Alchemy vs. Chemistry: the Etymological Origins of a Historiographic
Mistake,” Early Science and Medicine 3, no. 1, (1998): 32–65. Related arguments can be found in earlier works
by both authors.
19
On the intellectual and institutional context for the “invention” of chemistry as different from alchemy, see
also: L. M. Principe, “A Revolution Nobody Noticed? Changes in Early Eighteenth-Century Chymistry,” in
New Narratives in Eighteenth-Century Chemistry, ed. L. M. Principe (Dordrecht: Springer, 2007), 1–22; and
L. M. Principe, “Transmuting Chymistry into Chemistry: Eighteenth-Century Chrysopoeia and its Repudia-
tion,” in Neighbours and Territories: The Evolving Identity of Chemistry, ed. J. R. Bertomeu-Sánchez, D. T.
Burns and B. Van Tiggelen (Louvain-la-neuve: Mémosciences, 2008), 21–34. Further contributions to this
topic in the last two decades are, among many others: B. Joly, “Alchimie et rationalité: la question des critères
de démarcation entre chimie et alchimie au XVIIe siècle,” Sciences et Techniques en Perspective 31 (1995):
93–107; F. Abbri, “Alchemy and Chemistry: Chemical Discourses in the Seventeenth Century,” Early Science
and Medicine 5, no. 2 (2000): 214–26; and A. Clericuzio, “‘Sooty Empiricks’ and Natural Philosophers: The
Status of Chemistry in the Seventeenth Century,” Science in Context 23, no. 3 (2010): 329–50.
much broader field; and second, they show that the long-assumed connections
between the alchemist and vitalistic theories of matter and concerns with the
supernatural were far from predominant. As if this was not enough to stir the waters
of the hitherto authoritative study of alchemy, Principe and Newman also question
the Jungian interpretation of alchemical texts as projections of a collective
unconscious, by suggesting that it is possible to identify real materials and recipes in
the superficially confusing and apparently allegorical texts of the alchemists.20 There
is a very important corollary to this revision: if alchemy in general, and gold-making

in particular, is viewed as part of a wider early modern interest in experimenting with
nature, rather than as an obscure, nonscientific endeavour that occupied outcasts,
then its potential role in the development of modern science cannot be overlooked.21
The work by Newman and Principe has heralded what they call the “New
Historiography” of alchemy. The flagship of this historical revisionism is the
use of the archaic term “chymistry,” which the authors proposed as a more neutral,
all-inclusive alternative that avoids the anachronistic connotations usually attached
to the traditional “alchemy” and “chemistry.” The term is now so popular that it has
become commonplace in subsequent historiography; at the very least, academic
writers and conference presenters increasingly feel the need to justify their term of
choice and show their awareness of the “chymistry riff.”22 As an indication of this
trend, the number of times that “chymistry” features in books digitised by Google
Books multiplied three-fold between 1998 and 2008 (Figure 6). Although many
historians have embraced it, some critical voices of the revisionist approach have
appeared, typically in the form of variously convincing exceptions to some of
the generalisations made by Principe and Newman in the above-mentioned
publications and their subsequent work.23 If nothing else, these critiques are coherent
with the ethos of this revisionism, in that they challenge monolithic views and keep
the historiography diverse and multivocal.
The historiographical developments highlighted in the rest of this paper can be seen
as largely coherent with this New Historiography. This is not to say, however, that
they have all been inspired by the two most prominent advocates of this realignment
alone. Rather, they have emerged from a broader intellectual atmosphere that
challenges authoritative histories, acknowledges the risks of generalisation, and
appreciates that specific research skills and critical approaches are essential for a
proper historiography of alchemy.
20
See also J. Rodríguez Guerrero, “Examen de una amalgama problemática: psicología analítica y alquimia,”
Azogue 4 (2001), www.revistaazogue.com (accessed 1 April 2011).
21
L. M. Principe and W. R. Newman, “Some Problems with the Historiography of Alchemy,” in Secrets of
Nature: Astrology and Alchemy in Early Modern Europe, ed. W. R. Newman and A. Grafton (Cambridge,
Mass.: MIT Press, 2001), 385–434.
22
Such a disclaimer was wittily made by SHAC’s chairman, Robert Anderson, in his opening words to the
celebration of the society’s seventy-fifth anniversary.
23
H. Tilton, The Quest for the Phoenix: Spiritual Alchemy and Rosicrucianism in the Work of Count Michael
Maier (Berlin: Walter de Gruyte, 2003), 9–18; B. Vickers, “The ‘New Historiography’ and the Limits of
Alchemy,” Annals of Science 65 (2008): 127–56, and response in W. R. Newman, “Brian Vickers on Alchemy
and the Occult: a Response,” Perspectives on Science 17, no. 4 (2009): 482–506; G.-F. Cālian, “Alkimia
operativa and alkimia speculativa: Some Modern Controversies on the Historiography of Alchemy,” Annual
of Medieval Studies at CEU 16 (2010): 166–90.
figure 6 Linechart showing the growth in the frequency of the term “chymistry” in books
available digitally through Google Books with publication dates between 1990 and 2008.
Graph generated by Google Books Ngram Viewer (http://ngrams.googlelabs.com).
The craftsman, the magician, and the scholar

One of the many challenging issues in the study of early alchemy has been its some-
what ambiguous position between the mechanical and the liberal arts. Traditionally,
it has been argued that until 1600 there was “a sharp dividing line” between the two
spheres, and only from the Renaissance onwards do we see a growing interaction
between them.24 But were alchemists mere craftsmen concerned with the practical
exploitation of nature — chiefly the production of gold and medical remedies — or
were they humanists interested in the explanation of the secrets of the natural —
or even the supernatural — world? Most scholars now agree that most alchemists,
irrespective of personal orientations, engaged in the practical processing of real
substances. Furthermore, transmutation was, by necessity, an investigative
endeavour: no established method existed for turning base metals into gold, and
therefore alchemists could never be traditional craftspeople who simply repeated
practical procedures. These and similar realisations have led modern historians to
investigate, on the one hand, potential sources of the practical knowledge deployed
by alchemists, and, on the other, the contributions that the alchemists’ own research
may have made to the modern scientific method. The scholarly exploration of
these ideas has yielded some of the most refreshing approaches to early alchemy in
particular, and to the roots of the Scientific Revolution in general.
24
Edgar Zilsel, “The Origins of William Gilbert’s Experimental Method,” Journal of the History of Ideas 2, no.
1 (1941): 1–32.
For a few decades now, the so-called “scholar and craftsman thesis” has helped
to increase awareness that the transfer of skills and knowledge among different
professional spheres played an important part in the development of the experimental
method and the natural sciences in general.25 Implicitly or explicitly, this thesis
appears to have regained popularity in the recent historiography of alchemy. The
printing press, the use of vernacular languages, and the growing involvement of lay
investors in traditional crafts, such as metallurgy, greatly contributed to the diffusion
of the borders of knowledge and specialism between craftsmen and natural philoso-
phers — and alchemy could not be alien to these historical developments. Recent
research has highlighted how sixteenth-century books of secrets and more learned
publications on technology reached keen alchemists and other readers, who capital-
ised on this knowledge.26 This alchemical interest in the crafts is unlikely to be
completely new; both before and after the printing press, alchemists learned through
the circulation of manuscripts and by direct interaction with, and observation of,
practitioners producing commodities such as metals, pigments, and glass. As
suggested by the word cloud presented above, Pamela Smith has been one of the most
prominent recent advocates of the role of what she calls “vernacular knowledge.”
Through examination of artisanal practice in the early modern world, she has
expressly contended that artisans created abstract knowledge through their direct,
sensory experience with natural materials.27 Thus, any study of early forms of
scientific enquiry and experimentation with nature should pay more consideration to
artisans, rather than dismissing them as practitioners who used their hands but not
their heads. An eloquent example of the increasingly fluid boundaries between “craft”
and “science” in early modern alchemy is Graf Wolfgang II of Hohenlohe: an
aristocrat interested in transmutation, he could apply his knowledge and skills to
more mundane matters, such as the assay of noble metal ores to guide mining explo-
rations.28 In the same vein, the famous transmutational alchemist George Starkey
25
As early proponents, see: R. Hall, “The Scholar and the Craftsman in the Scientific Revolution,” in Critical
Problems in the History of Science, ed. M. Clagett (Madison, Wis.: The University of Wisconsin, 1962), 3–23;
R. K. Merton, Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth-Century England, first published in Osiris 4
(1938); and the papers, mostly dated in the 1940s, collected in The Social Origins of Modern Science, ed. E.
Zilsel (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 2000). For more recent examples, see works edited by J. V. Field and A. J. L. James
in Renaissance and Revolution: Humanists, Scholars, Craftsmen, and Natural Philosophers in Early Modern
Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993), published in honour of R. Hall.
26
W. Eamon, Science and the Secrets of Nature: Books of Secrets in Medieval and Early Modern Europe
(Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994); P. O. Long, Openness, Secrecy, Authorship: Technical Arts
and the Culture of Knowledge from Antiquity to the Renaissance (Baltimore, Md: Johns Hopkins University
Press, 2001); M. Pereira, “Alchemy and the Use of Vernacular Languages in the Late Middle Ages,” Speculum
74, no. 2 (1999): 336–56.
27
See especially P. Smith, The Body of the Artisan: Art and Experience in the Scientific Revolution (Chicago,
Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2004), but also P. Smith and B. Schmidt, ed., Making Knowledge in Early
Modern Europe: Practices, Objects, and Texts, 1400–1800 (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2007),
in addition to other essays by P. Smith, including, most recently, “Vermilion, Mercury, Blood, and Lizards:
Matter and Meaning in Metalworking,” in Materials and Expertise in Early Modern Europe: Between Market
and Laboratory, ed. U. Klein and E. Spary (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2010), 29–49.
28
J. Weyer, Graf Wolfgang II. von Hohenlohe und die Alchemie: Alchemistische Studienn Schloss Weikersheim
1587–1610 (Sigmaringen: Thorbecke Verlag, 1992).
invested some of the money he earned as a medical practitioner in order to learn

metallurgical skills.29 Besides resituating alchemists within wider networks of learning
and practice, these and other studies demonstrate that the early modern belief in
transmutation was compatible with other forms of knowledge and academic enquiry,
rather than an aberration for fraudsters and social reprobates.
Yet the transfer of knowledge took place in the other direction too, and
recent works have highlighted the explicit acknowledgement of alchemists that
some nonalchemists make when talking about technical discoveries, as well as the
alchemical theories implicit in metallurgical treatises.30 The contribution of chymistry

to intellectual knowledge goes well beyond the provision of a few technical secrets:
in its methods and theories of matter, it appears to have paved the way for modern
experimental science.31 The last decade has seen a plethora of publications that
place chymistry as a foundation stone of the so-called Scientific Revolution. By
demonstrating that the quest for transmutation and alchemical theories of matter
were at the core of the most influential scientific work of such figures as Boyle
and Newton, rather than sidelines or “guilty pleasures,” the recent historiography is
adding to the evidence that chymistry may have played a more fundamental role in
the Scientific Revolution than has been hitherto recognised.32 Some recent surveys,
drawing on a wider range of sources, demonstrate that the cases of Boyle and Newton
were not so exceptional in this regard — alchemy and transmutation, it appears,
provided fundamental foundations for modern chemical theories and methods,
29
W. R. Newman, Gehennical Fire: The Lives of George Starkey, an American Alchemist in the Scientific
Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994); W. R. Newman and L. M. Principe, Alchemy
Tried in the Fire: Starkey, Boyle, and the Fate of Helmontian Chymistry (Chicago, Ill.: University of Chicago
Press, 2002).
30
See W. Dym, “Alchemy and Mining: Metallogenesis and Prospecting in Early Mining Books,” Ambix 55, no.
3 (2008): 232–254.
31
Fire assay deserves a special mention here, as an analytical technique relevant to chymists and metallurgists,
which routinely utilised several scientific procedures and natural laws that would not be formulated in print
for centuries. Its role in the development of modern chemistry is only beginning to be recognised. See:
Th. Rehren, “Alchemy and Fire Assay — An Analytical Approach,” Historical Metallurgy 30, no. 2, (1996):
136–42; W. R. Newman, “Alchemy, Assaying and Experiment,” in Instruments and Experimentation in the
History of Chemistry, ed. F. Holmes and T. H. Levere (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2000), 35–54; and
M. Martinón-Torres and Th. Rehren, “Alchemy, Chemistry and Metallurgy in Renaissance Europe: A Wider
Context for Fire-assay Remains,” Historical Metallurgy 39, no. 1 (2005): 14–28.
32
The main references on Boyle’s alchemy are: L. M. Principe, The Aspiring Adept: Robert Boyle and His
Alchemical Quest (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1998); and M. Hunter, Boyle: Between God and
Science (New Haven, Conn.: Yale University Press, 2009). On Newton’s alchemy, see: B. J. T. Dobbs, The
Janus Faces of Genius: The Role of Alchemy in Newton’s Thought (Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press, 1991); L. Principe, “Reflections on Newton’s Alchemy in the Light of the New Historiography of
Alchemy,” in Newton and Newtonianism: New Studies, ed. J. E. Force and S. E. Hutton (Dordrecht: Kluwer,
2004), 205–19; W. R. Newman, “The Background to Newton’s Chymistry,” in The Cambridge Companion to
Newton, ed. I. Bernard Cohen and George Smith (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002), 358–69;
W. R. Newman, “Newton’s Early Optical Theory and its Debt to Chymistry,” in Lumière et vision dans les
sciences et dans les arts, de l’Antiquité du XVIIe siècle, ed. D. Jacquart and M. Hochmann (Geneva: Librairie
Droz, 2010); and J. T. Young, “Isaac Newton’s Alchemical Notes in the Royal Society,” Notes and Records
of the Royal Society 60 (2006), 25–34. For a comparison between Boyle’s and Newton’s alchemies, see
L. Principe, “The Alchemies of Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton: Alternate Approaches and Divergent Deploy-
ments,” in Rethinking the Scientific Revolution, ed. Margaret J. Osler (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 2000), 201–20.
rather than anecdotal contributions.33 Along similar lines, recent scholarship has
continued to show that religion, esotericism, and magic, which infused early modern
chymistry as well as other areas of natural philosophy, were neither independent
strands nor unsurpassable obstacles to the emergence of modern science.34
Networks, patrons, business, and fraudsters

With many long-standing assumptions in the line of fire, historians have become
increasingly wary of the dangers of generalisation. Following a surprising surge of
broad histories of chemistry in the early 1990s,35 we are progressively abandoning
attempts to reconstruct the history of chemistry, or that of science generally, as a
single line of evolution dotted with individual luminaries who brought the discipline
towards an ever more knowledgeable present.36 Instead, we appreciate that even the
greatest chymists did not exist in isolation, that the tree of knowledge is far too diverse
to be simplified in a chronography of discoveries, and that only through a detailed
consideration of specific sociocultural contexts can we explain the emergence of ideas.
Some historians, such as David Knight, have embraced the motto that “science
after all is not just a matter of geniuses in garrets,” and subsequently devoted
themselves to exploring the development of ideas rather than of individuals.37
A notable example of this approach is Hiro Hirai’s exhaustive Le concept de
semence, which traces the use and influence of the concept of semina rerum in
early modern theories of generation.38 Many others have continued to anchor their
historical research on specific characters, with a special emphasis on early modern
alchemists.39 However, they chiefly use them as foci for much more dynamic studies
33
B. T. Moran, Distilling Knowledge: Alchemy, Chemistry, and the Scientific Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.:
Harvard University Press, 2005); W. R. Newman, Atoms and Alchemy: Chymistry and the Experimental
Origins of the Scientific Revolution (Chicago, Ill.: The University of Chicago Press, 2006). Some disagreement
remains, however: see: U. Klein, “Styles of Experimentation and Alchemical Matter Theory in the Scientific
Revolution,” Metascience 16 (2007): 247–56, and response in W. R. Newman “Alchemical Atoms or Artisanal
‘Building Blocks’? A Response to Klein,” Perspectives in Science 17, no. 2 (2009): 212–23; and A. F. Chalmers,
“Boyle and the Origins of Modern Chemistry: Newman Tried in the Fire,” Studies in History and Philosophy
of Science 41 (2010): 1–10, and response in W. R. Newman, “How Not to Integrate the History and Philosophy
of Science: A Reply to Chalmers,” Studies in History and Philosophy of Science 41 (2010): 203–13.
34
See: A. G. Debus, “Chemists, Physicians, and Changing Perspectives on the Scientific Revolution,” Isis 89
(1998): 66–81; J. Henry, The Scientific Revolution and the Origins of Modern Science (Basingstoke: Palgrave,
2002); and Newman, “Brian Vickers on Alchemy.” For an early recommendation not to artificially segregate
the “nonscientific” from the “scientific,” see W. Pagel, “The Vindication of Rubbish,” Middlesex Hospital
Journal 45 (1945): 1–4, as cited in Debus, “Chemists, Physicians, and Changing Perspectives.”
35
The most ambitious of these, in size and scope, are: B. Bensaude-Vincent and I. Stengers, Histoire de la
chimie (Paris: Éditions la Découverte, 1993); and, especially, W. H. Brock, The Fontana History of Chemistry
(London: Fontana, 1992). These and other general surveys, aimed at different readers, are discussed
comparatively in Russell and Roberts, “Getting to Know.”
36
As a recent review of presentism in the history of science, see O. Moro Abadía, “Thinking About ‘Presentism’
from a Historian’s Perspective: Herbert Butterfield and Hélène Metzger,” History of Science (2009) 47: 55–77.
37
D. Knight, Ideas in Chemistry. A History of the Science (London: The Athlone Press, 1992), 7. See also
Trevor H. Levere, Transforming Matter: A History of Chemistry From Alchemy to the Buckyball (Baltimore,
Md: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001).
38
H. Hirai, Le concept de semence dans les théories de la matière à la Renaissance: de Marsile Ficin à Pierre
Gassendi (Turnhout: Brepols, 2005).
39
A resurgence of “chemical biographies” is also noted in the history of chemistry. See: Russell and Roberts,
“Getting to Know”; and Coley, “Chemistry before 1800.”
of networks of people who lived in specific settings maintaining important intellectual

and mundane interactions alike. If R. Evans’s study of the court of Rudolf II
can be considered an early example of this strategy,40 Bruce Moran’s research on
the “circle” of Moritz of Hessen41 and Dóra Bobory’s work on Count Boldizsár
Batthyány42 provide exemplary recent instances. Other examples can be found
in articles, monographs or edited volumes on Robert Boyle,43 John Dee,44
Simon Forman,45 George Ripley,46 Andreas Libavius,47 George Starkey,48 John of
Rupescissa,49 John Winthrop, Jr.,50 and Johann Moriaen.51 These publications are
much more than chronicles of feats and dates of the chymists or patrons in question:
they include painstaking research into their published and unpublished sources,
notebooks, correspondence, and other documentary sources, integrated into their
broader institutional and socioeconomic context. Other historians have more
explicitly concerned themselves with specific institutional settings, such as the
Accademia del Cimento52 or the Swedish Board of Mines,53 further demonstrating
how self-promotion, personal connections and rivalry had a part to play in explaining
the history of alchemy. Although there is no space to comment on the individual
merit of these publications, the networks that they reveal can all be said to constitute
small but very significant pieces in the historical mosaic of early science.
Of particular relevance (and among the most informative to historians) are the
relationships that existed between alchemists and their patrons, either as individual
arrangements or as larger networks of practitioners centred on an aristocratic sponsor.
The study of alchemical patronage is not new, but recent scholarship has brought it
back to the fore. Most of the studies cited in the paragraph above address, where
40
R. J. W. Evans, Rudolf II and His World: A Study in Intellectual History, 1576–1612 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1973).
41
B. T. Moran, The Alchemical World of the German Court: Occult Philosophy and Chemical Medicine in the
Circle of Moritz of Hessen (1572–1632), Sudhoff’s Archiv, Beiheft 29 (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1991).
42
D. Bobory, The Sword and the Crucible: Count Boldizsár Batthyány and Natural Philosophy in
Sixteenth-Century Hungary (Newcastle: Cambridge Scholar Publishing, 2009).
43
Principe, The Aspiring Adept; Hunter, Boyle.
44
D. E. Harkness, John Dee’s Conversations with Angels: Cabala, Alchemy, and the End of Nature (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1999); S. Clucas, ed., John Dee: Interdisciplinary Studies in English Renaissance
Thought (Dordrecht: Springer, 2006); and the special issue, Ambix 52, no. 3 (2005).
45
B. H. Traister, The Notorious Astrological Physician of London: Works and Days of Simon Forman (Chicago,
Ill.: University of Chicago Press, 2001); L. Kassell, Medicine and Magic in Elizabethan London. Simon Forman:
Astrologer, Alchemist, and Physician (Oxford: Clarendon, 2005).
46
J. M. Rampling, “Establishing the Canon: George Ripley and His Alchemical Sources,” Ambix 55, no. 3
(2008): 189–208.
47
B. T. Moran, Andreas Libavius and the Transformation of Alchemy: Separating Chemical Cultures with
Polemical Fire (Sagamore Beach, Mass.: Science History Publications, 2007).
48
Newman, Gehennical Fire; Newman and Principe, Alchemy Tried in the Fire.
49
L. DeVun, Prophecy, Alchemy, and the End of Time: John of Rupescissa in the Late Middle Ages (New York:
Columbia University Press, 2009).
50
W. Woodward, Prospero’s America: John Winthrop, Jr, Alchemy, and the Creation of New England Culture,
1606–1676 (Chapel Hill, N.C.: University of North Carolina Press, 2010).
51
J. T. Young, Faith, Medical Alchemy and Natural Philosophy: Johann Moriaen, Reformed Intelligencer, and
the Hartlib Circle (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998).
52
M. Beretta, A. Clericuzio and L. M. Principe, ed., The Academia del Cimento and its European Context
(Sagamore Beach, Mass.: Science History Publications, 2009).
53
H. Fors, Mutual Favours: The Social and Scientific Practice of Eighteenth-Century Swedish Chemistry
(Doctoral dissertation, Uppsala Universitet, 2003); H. Fors, “Occult Traditions and Enlightened Science: The
Swedish Board of Mines as an Intellectual Environment 1680–1760,” in Principe, Chymists and Chymistry,
239–52.
relevant, the various deals struck between alchemists and their patrons, as these often
help us to understand the intellectual and economic atmosphere that both enabled
and constrained alchemy. In addition to those, recent research has shed light on the
often mentioned but rarely studied alchemy in the court of Philip II in Spain.54 When
patronage of alchemists is studied in detail, patrons often emerge neither as selfless
sponsors of research nor as superstitious adepts of obscure arts. Rather, these studies
have shown that alchemists offered practical solutions to real problems and ambitions
— mostly, health and wealth — and that their services were often requested as such.55
A particularly original and insightful contribution along this line has been offered by
Tara Nummedal, who has tried to disentangle the different types of character who
would fall under the umbrella of “alchemy” in the sixteenth-century Holy Roman
Empire. Among others, she has crucially singled out the figure of the fraudster or
Betrüger as a specific alchemical character: one who holds much responsibility for the
disrepute of alchemy past and present, but who does not represent the myriad of
laboratory practitioners concerned with metallic transmutation, medicine, and other
secrets of nature. An important aspect of her work has centred on the legal proceedings
that led, in many cases, to the imprisonment or execution of these individuals. In every
instance, the culprits were accused of deceit or fraud for selling false Philosophers’
Stones, circulating counterfeit coinage or, especially from the mid-sixteenth century,
failing to deliver alchemical products after entering contractual agreements with
princes. It was fraud, and not alchemy, that was chastised.
The entrepreneurial dimension of alchemy, however, was not constrained to
supplying metals and medicines to European courts. Among other commodities, glass
has been revealed as a key output of the alchemical laboratory that had been greatly
overlooked by previous historians. Two new volumes, although rather different in
approach, have both focused on the history of glass-making and placed emphasis on
the important role played by alchemists in the invention of, or experimentation with,
different types of glass.56 As an artificial imitation of natural stones invented in the
second millennium BC, glass represents one of the earliest and most unequivocal
expressions of the old alchemical precept of “art imitating nature,” and one that
54
See: F. J. Puerto Sarmiento, “The Golden Panacea. Alchemy and Distillation in the Court of Philip II
(1527–1598),” Dynamis 17 (1997), 107–40; J. Rodríguez Guerrero and P. Rojas García, “La Chymica de
Richard Stanihurst en la Corte de Felipe II,” Azogue 4 (2001), www.revistaazogue.com (accessed 1 April 2011);
M. Rey Bueno, “La Mayson pour Distiller des Eaües at El Escorial: Alchemy and Medicine at the Court of
Philip II, 1556–1598,” in Health and Medicine in Hapsburg Spain: Agents, Practices, Representations, Medical
History Supplement 29, ed. T. Huguet-Termes, J. Arrizabalaga and H. J. Cook (London: The Wellcome Trust,
2009); and W. Eamon, “Masters of Fire: Italian Alchemists in the Court of Philip II,” in López Pérez, Kahn
and Rey Bueno, Chymia: Science and Nature, 138–56.
55
For an especially articulate presentation of this and related arguments, see: P. H. Smith, “Alchemy as a
Language of Mediation at the Habsburg Court,” Isis 85, no. 1 (1994): 1–25; and P. H. Smith, The Business of
Alchemy: Science and Culture in the Holy Roman Empire (Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1994).
See also essays in Patronage and Institutions: Science, Technology, and Medicine at the European Court
1500–1750, ed. B. T. Moran (Rochester, N.Y.: Boydell Press, 1991), especially the editor’s essay (“Patronage
and Institutions: Courts, Universities and Academies in Germany; An Overview 1550–1750,” 169–84).
56
M. Beretta, The Alchemy of Glass: Counterfeit, Imitation and Transmutation in Ancient Glassmaking.
(Sagamore Beach, Mass.: Science History Publications, Watson Publishing, 2009); this is a survey of the
history of glass, focused on how practical experience with natural and artificial stones informed evolving
theories of matter. D. Kerssenbrock-Krosigk, ed., Glass of the Alchemists. Lead Crystal — Gold Ruby,
1650–1750 (Corning, NY: The Corning Museum of Glass, 2008); this is a superbly illustrated exhibition
catalogue including valuable introductory essays by notable historians.
stimulated great interest among natural philosophers, craftspeople and consumers

alike. Investigations with glass nourished theories of matter, enabled the production
of more efficient laboratory instruments, and ultimately fed a keen market that sought
ever more beautiful and sophisticated products. All of these dimensions are intercon-
nected, and the books cited should prompt a sorely overdue consideration of the
intellectual and commercial implications of glass in future scholarship on alchemy.57
Western medieval alchemy and chymiatria

The study of early modern transmutational and metallurgical alchemy has experi-
enced a dramatic revival, but other areas of investigation have also experienced strong
growth over the past couple of decades. Research on Western medieval alchemy and
chymiatria illustrates some of these developments. Notwithstanding the various
Anglophone works cited above, many important studies in these fields are written in
languages other than English, or focus on European regions beyond the confines of
Britain or central Europe. Although they share approaches with those discussed
above, such as an inclination to focus on microhistories (often based around a critical
edition) and a renewed interest in patronage, we should also underscore the fact
that some of these studies also provide strong contributions to fields that represent
different, original and influential academic traditions.
As a body of work that has enlightened our understanding of one of the most
important strands of alchemical thought in Europe since the Middle Ages, Michela
Pereira’s rigorous treatment of the pseudo-Lullian corpus deserves a special mention.58
Further important work on medieval alchemy and medicine has continued to be
produced in Italy.59 Other notable exhaustive works on Western medieval
alchemy include critical editions of the Arnald de Villanova corpus,60 the Rosarium
57
On glass, see also A. M. Roos, “A Speculum of Chymical Practice: Isaac Newton, Martin Lister (1639–1712),
and the Making of Telescopic Mirrors,” Notes and Records of the Royal Society 64, no. 2 (2010): 105–20. On
the connections between laboratory and market, see essays in Klein and Spary, Materials and Expertise.
Another key material that should be rescued from neglect by alchemy historians is brass, a golden alloy of
copper and zinc that was widely perceived as “tinctured copper”. See: V. Karpenko, “Not All That Glitters
is Gold: Gold Imitations in History,” Ambix 54, no. 2 (2007): 172–191; and Th. Rehren and M. Martinón-
Torres, “Naturam ars imitata: European Brassmaking between Craft and Science,” in Archaeology, History
and Science: Integrating Approaches to Ancient Materials, ed. M. Martinón-Torres and Th. Rehren (Walnut
Creek, Cal.: Left Coast, 2008), 167–88.
58
M. Pereira, The Alchemical Corpus Attributed to Raymond Lull (London: Warburg Institute Surveys and
Texts, 1989); M. Pereira, L’oro dei filosofi: saggio sulle idee di un alchimista del Trecento (Spoleto: Centro
Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1992); M. Pereira, “Medicina in the Alchemical Writings Attributed to
Raymond Lull (14th–17th Centuries),” in Alchemy and Chemistry in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries,
ed. P. Rattansi and A. Clericuzio (Dordrecht: Kluwer, 1994), 1–15; M. Pereira, “Mater Medicinarum: English
Physicians and the Alchemical Elixir in the Fifteenth Century,” in Medicine from the Black Death to the French
Disease, ed. R. French, J. Arrizabalaga, A. Cunningham and L. Garcia-Ballester (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1998),
26–52.
59
J. Agrimi and C. Crisciani, Les “Consilia” Médicaux, trans. C. Viola (Turnhout: Brepols, 1994); C. Crisciani,
L’arte del sole e della luna: alchimia e filosofia nel medioevo, ed. C. Crisciani and M. Pereira (Spoleto: Centro
Italiano di Studi sull’Alto Medioevo, 1996); C. Crisciani, Il Papa e l’alchimia: Felice V, Guglielmo Fabri e
l’elixir (Rome: Viella, 2002); C. Crisciani and A. Paravicini Bagliani, ed., Alchemia e medicina nel Medioevo
(Tavarnuzze, Florence: Sismel, 2003).
60
A. Calvet, “Le De vita philosophorum du pseudo-Arnauld de Villeneuve. Texte du manuscrit B.N. lat. 7817,
” Chrysopoeia IV (1990–1991): 36–79; A. Calvet, “Mutations de l’alchimie médicale au XVe siècle. A propos
des textes authentiques et apocryphes d’Arnaud de Villeneuve,” Micrologus 3 (1995): 185–209; A. Calvet, “Le
De secretis naturæ du pseudo-Arnaud-de Villeneuve,” Chrysopoeia: Cinq traités alchimiques médiévaux VI
(1997–1999): 155–206.
philosophorum,61 the Summa perfectionis,62 and, among lesser-known manuscripts,

Constantine of Pisa’s Liber secretorum alchimie.63 Although already cited above, Leah
DeVun’s monograph on John of Rupescissa may be noted again here as a contextual
approach to medieval apocalyptic literature centred on the figure of a friar who
should also be considered from the standpoint of the history of pharmacology.64
The alchemy–medicine binome often evokes a third concept: Paracelsianism. This
research area continues to be very fruitful, as demonstrated by a number of recent
publications focused on Spain and France.65 Among the latter, Didier Kahn’s
authoritative volume on Paracelsianism in France presents a detailed and colourful

picture of the debates among Paracelsians, and also between them and their
adversaries within France and beyond.66 Like Kahn, present and future scholars of
Paracelsianism will no doubt benefit from Wilhelm Kühlmann and Joachim Telle’s
colossal compilation of critical editions, commentaries and much more in their
Corpus Paracelsisticum.67
Material culture and alchemical practice

The focus on alchemical microhistories, the wave of interest in business connections
and the eagerness to resituate alchemy within the history of modern science have
provided a fertile ground for studies that concentrate on the practical aspects
of laboratory activities. These works are concerned not only with the reconstruction
of laboratories and experiments, but also, crucially, with how these related to
observations and more theoretical abstractions.68 The spiritual and philosophical
dimensions of alchemy are therefore not disregarded: rather, they are complemented
by hard data in the form of the instruments, reagents and experiments that
ultimately fed theories of matter. Yet, as will be shown below, there is still a slant in
practice-oriented studies towards the metallurgical aspects of alchemy that leaves
much room for research on the practical aspects of iatrochemistry.
61
J. Telle, trans. L. Claren and J. Huber, ed., Rosarium Philosophorum. Ein alchemisches Florilegium des
Spätmittelalters (Faksimilie der illustrierten Erstausgabe Frankfurt 1550), 2 vols. (Weinheim: VCH Verlagsge-
sellschaft, 1992).
62
W. R. Newman, ed., The Summa Perfectionis of Pseudo-Geber: A Critical Edition, Translation and Study
(Leiden: Brill, 1991).
63
Constantine of Pisa, The Book of the Secrets of Alchemy: Introduction, Critical Edition, Translation and
Commentary, ed. B. Obrist (Leiden: Brill, 1990).
64
DeVun, Prophecy.
65
In Spain, see: M. López Pérez, “La influencia de la alquimia medieval hispana en la Europa moderna,” Asclepio
LIV, no. 2 (2002): 211–29; M. López Pérez, Asclepio Renovado: Alquimia y Medicina en la España Moderna
(1500–1700) (Madrid: Corona Borealis, 2003); and M. Rey Bueno, “Los paracelsistas españoles: medicina
química en la España moderna,” in Más allá de la Leyenda Negra: España y la Revolución Científica, ed. V.
Navarro Brotóns and W. Eamon (Madrid: CSIC, 2007), 41–56. In France, see: H. Baudry, Contribution à
l’étude du paracelsisme en France au XVIe siècle (1560–1580): De la naissance du mouvement aux années de
maturité: Le Demosterion de Roche Le Baillif (1578), Études et essais sur la Renaissance LX (Paris: Honoré
Champion, 2005); Roch Le Baillif, “Le Demosterion,” in Textes de la Renaissance 93, ed. H. Baudry
(Paris: Honoré Champion, 2005); and D. Kahn, Alchimie et Paracelsisme en France (1567–1625), Cahiers
d’Humanisme et Renaissance 80 (Geneva: Librairie Droz, 2007).
66
Kahn, Alchimie et Paracelsisme.
67
Wilhelm Kühlmann and Joachim Telle, ed., Corpus Paracelsisticum: Dokumente frühneuzeitlicher
Naturphilosophie in Deutschland, 2 vols. (Tübingen: Max Niemeyer, 2001 and 2004).
68
See essays in Holmes and Levere, Instruments and Experimentation.
Some authors have capitalised on the rich seam of information provided by extant
laboratory notebooks.69 Others, most notably Vladimír Karpenko, have relied on
their knowledge of modern metallurgy to try to propose actual material foundations
for the classification of metals and purported transmutations recorded in historical
sources.70 A third research avenue into the materials of alchemy has been the direct
study of the materials themselves, in the form of archaeological remains.
Paying attention to instrumentation, whether as historical depictions or extant
artefacts in museum collections, is not a new approach in itself. To name but two
classic examples, both Marcellin Berthelot71 and James R. Partington72 make use of
these types of source. An overlap in sources and interests should also go some way
to explain the well-rooted connections between the Society for the History of
Alchemy and Chemistry and the Science Museum in London, among other museums.73
It can be argued, however, that the study of the material culture of the laboratory has
experienced an exponential growth over the last fifteen years. In 2000, Robert Anderson
published a seminal paper highlighting the fact that “little or nothing” had appeared
on scholarly works regarding chemical laboratory equipment.74 Using distillation
equipment as a case in point, he demonstrated that more archaeological remains were
available to the chemistry historian than one might have at first suspected, and that
their informative potential was complementary rather than redundant in relation to
that of written sources. As a somewhat parallel development, archaeologists have
continued to excavate more or less complete assemblages from chymical laboratories.75
These allow high-resolution studies that, akin to the microhistories mentioned above,
contribute accurate snapshots of the history of chymistry.
Especially promising within the archaeology of chymistry — although I should here
confess the bias of a personal preference — is the application of scientific techniques
to reveal details of the manufacture, place of production, properties and utilisation
69
Weyer, Graf Wolfgang II. von Hohenlohe; Newman and Principe, Alchemy Tried in the fire. On note-taking
by a medical alchemist, see A. Timmermann, “Doctor’s Order: An Early Modern Doctor’s Alchemical
Notebooks,” Early Science and Medicine 13, no. 1 (2008), 25–52.
70
V. Karpenko, “Coins and Medals Made of Alchemical Metal,” Ambix 35, no. 2 (1988): 65–76; V. Karpenko,
“The Chemistry and Metallurgy of Transmutation,” Ambix 39, no. 2 (1992): 47–62; V. Karpenko, “Systems
of Metals in Alchemy,” Ambix 50, no. 2 (2003): 208–30; V. Karpenko, “Not all that Glitters is Gold”;
“Witnesses of a Dream: Alchemical Coins and Medals,” in Mystical Metal of Gold: Essays on Alchemy and
Renaissance Culture, ed. S. J. Linden (Brooklyn, N.Y.: AMS Press, 2007).
71
M. Berthelot, Collection des anciens alchimistes grecs, 3 vols. (Paris: G. Steinhel, 1887–1888).
72
J. R. Partington, A History of Chemistry, 4 vols. (London: Macmillan, 1961–1970).
73
See W. Brock’s contribution to this issue (Ambix, 58, no. 3 (2011), 191–214).
74
R. Anderson, “The Archaeology of Chemistry,” in Holmes and Levere, Instruments and Experimentation, 5–34.
75
Only some of the more impressive sites and relevant publications can be cited here: I. Rouaze, “Un atelier de
distillation du Moyen Age,” Antiquités Nationales, nouvelle série, 22 (1989): 159–271; S. von Osten, Das
Alchemistenlaboratorium von Oberstockstall. Ein Fundkomplex des 16. Jahrhunderts aus Niederösterreich
(Innsbruck: Universitätsverlag Wagner, 1998); R. W. Soukup and H. Mayer, Alchemistisches Gold. Paracelsis-
tische Pharmaka, Laboratoriumstechnik im 16. Jahrhundert (Vienna: Böhlau, 1997); P. Kamber, P. Kurzmann
and Y. Gerber, “Der Gelbschmied und Alchemist(?)vom Ringelhof,” Archäologische Bodenforschung des
Kantons Basel-Stadt — Jahresbericht 1998 (1998): 151–99; J. A. Bennett, S. A. Jonhston and A. V. Simcock,
Solomon’s House in Oxford: New Finds from the First Museum (Oxford: Museum of the History of Science,
2000); G. Hull (with contributions by P. Blinkhorn, P. Cannon, S. Hamilton-Dyler, C. Salter and B. White),
“The Excavation and Analysis of an 18th-Century Deposit of Anatomical Remains and Chemical Apparatus
from the Rear of the First Ashmolean Museum (now Museum of the History of Science), Broad Street,
Oxford,” Post-Medieval Archaeology 37 (2003), 1–28; K. Friedl, “Die Probierstube eines Alchemisten im 16.
Jahrhundert unterhalb der Loreto-Kapelle,” Reib Eisen. Das Kulturmagazin aus Kapfenberg 23 (2006):
191–95.
of laboratory instruments. These are sometimes supplemented by the experimental

replication of ancient reactions. The broad field of archaeological science, or archae-
ometry, has a long history, and some analyses of laboratory equipment or related
materials, such as metallurgical slag and glass, are scattered in the literature. Only
more recently, however, has there been a more systematic attempt at integrating the
work of specialists who have largely been unaware of each other — namely,
archaeometrists and science historians. When writing about alembics, Anderson stated
that “it is exceedingly difficult — in fact, nearly impossible — to determine who
made them and where they were made.”76 In fact, the chemical and mineralogical
analysis of laboratory instruments can answer these and other questions. Focusing
on the other key instrument of the chymical laboratory — the crucible — a recent
project has unveiled a large-scale international market of reaction vessels that were
manufactured by German makers and sold across the early modern Atlantic world.77
At the other end of the spectrum, the ash cupels essential for assaying were generally
made by the users themselves, and their variability demonstrates different learning
traditions and understandings of the properties of materials.78 Besides unveiling
hitherto unknown international connections between potters, alchemists, assayers,
and metallurgists, this work has illustrated how artificial materials and instruments
were developed in response to technical needs, sometimes much earlier than written
sources would attest, to the point that it can be argued that chemical discoveries —
and related theorisation — would not have taken place without them.79 The study of
material culture has also revealed some makers’ marks, possibly combining alchemical
and freemasonry imagery, that appear in a plethora of early modern artefacts.80
Turning to the practical activities of specific laboratories, archaeological science
has begun to clarify the chymical processes carried out at a variety of sites, such as
the famous laboratory discovered in the chapel of the manor house in Oberstockstall,
Austria,81 Robert Plot’s Ashmolean laboratory in Oxford, UK,82 and the experiments
in search of mineral wealth performed under the encouragement of British
76
Anderson, “The Archaeology of Chemistry,” 5.
77
M. Martinón-Torres, “The Tools of the Chymist: Archaeological and Scientific Analyses of Early Modern
Laboratories,” in Principe, Chymists and Chymistry, 149–63; M. Martinón-Torres and Th. Rehren, “Post-
Medieval Crucible Production and Distribution: A Study of Materials and Materialities,” Archaeometry 51
(2009): 49–74.
78
M. Martinón-Torres, Th. Rehren, N. Thomas and A. Mongiatti, “Identifying Materials, Recipes and Choices:
Some Suggestions for the Study of Archaeological Cupels,” in Archaeometallurgy in Europe 2007 (Milano:
Associazione Italiana di Metallurgia, 2009), 435–45.
79
Martinón-Torres and Rehren, “Alchemy, Chemistry and Metallurgy”; M. Martinón-Torres, Th. Rehren and
I. C. Freestone, “Mullite and the Mystery of Hessian Wares,” Nature 444 (2006): 437–38; M. Martinón-Torres,
I. C. Freestone, A. Hunt and Th. Rehren, “Mass-produced Mullite Crucibles in Medieval Europe: Manufacture
and Material Properties,” Journal of the American Ceramic Society 91 (2008): 2071–74; M. Martinón-Torres,
“Los orígenes alquímicos de la química moderna: una perspectiva arqueológica,” Anales de Química 104, no.
4 (2008): 310–17.
80
M. Martinón-Torres, “Of Marks, Prints, Pots and Becherovka: Freemasons’ Branding in Early Modern
Europe?”, in Cultures of Commodity Branding, ed. A. Bevan and D. Wengrow (Walnut Creek, Cal.: Left Coast
Press, 2010), 213–33.
81
See references in n. 75, and A. Mongiatti, “Assaying and Smelting Noble Metals in Sixteenth-Century Austria:
A Comparative Analytical Study (PhD Thesis, University College London, 2009).
82
M. Martinón-Torres, “Inside Solomon’s House: An Archaeological Study of the Old Ashmolean Chymical
Laboratorory in Oxford,” Ambix (forthcoming).
entrepreneurs in Jamestown, Virginia.83 Besides the analysis and processing of noble

metals, these workshops engaged in experimentation with glass, zinc, and brass,
among other materials, further emphasising the need to diversify our research foci.
Furthermore, as practical experiments allow inferences about the underlying knowl-
edge and perception of materials, it is possible to connect chymical practice with
theories in specific contexts.
Primary sources and digital resources

The advent of the archaeology of alchemy notwithstanding, written sources will
rightfully remain as the main staple for scholars of early alchemy and chemistry. I
will not attempt to collate here the many critical editions of primary sources that have
continued to appear in the last couple of decades, but those who spend long days in
libraries and archives deserve credit and admiration as key enablers of the trends
discussed in this paper. The variety of skills and sheer hard labour that go into tran-
scribing, translating and editing these foundational stones for all other historiography
cannot be overstated. A review of recent developments in our field, however, cannot
omit a mention to the revolution entailed by the internet.
Readers of Ambix recently had the occasion to celebrate the fact that all of the
back issues had been digitised and made available online. This journal thus embraced
a trend across academia to take advantage of the ease and speed of access made
possible by the net. The availability of PDFs of academic articles is supplemented by
a much greater (virtual) interaction between scholars and more informal blogs and
discussion fora that permit almost immediate dissemination and discussion of
research outputs as they develop. Of specific relevance to this field are a plethora
of projects that are making early books and primary sources available to anyone with
a computer — or, in some instances, a computer and an institutional subscription.
Besides more generic enterprises such as the Gutenberg Project,84 the multipartner
Early English Books Online,85 Columbia’s Digital Scriptorium,86 Hagen’s Early
Modern Thought Online,87 and the myriad of texts and images channelled
online through the University of Pennsylvania Libraries,88 I should mention the online
journal Azogue,89 which is doing so much for the history of alchemy in Spain, as well
a number of portals concentrating on the writings of individuals such as Ramon
Llull,90 Francis Bacon,91 Paracelsus,92 Robert Boyle,93 Isaac Newton,94 and Simon
83
M. Martinón-Torres and Th. Rehren, “Trials and Errors in Search of Mineral Wealth: Metallurgical
Experiments in Early Colonial Jamestown,” Rittenhouse 21 (2007): 82–97.
84
http://www.gutenberg.org
85
http://eebo.chadwyck.com/home
86
http://scriptorium.columbia.edu
87
http://emto.fernuni-hagen.de/emto
88
Schoenberg Center for Electronic Text and Image, http://sceti.library.upenn.edu
89
Azogue: Revista Electrónica Dedicada al Estudio Histórico-Crítico de la Alquimia, www.revistaazogue.com
90
Ramon Llull Database, http://orbita.bib.ub.es/ramon
91
Francis Bacon Correspondence Project, http://www.livesandletters.ac.uk/bacon/baconindex.html
92
Zurich Paracelsus Project, http://www.paracelsus.uzh.ch
93
The Workdiaries of Robert Boyle, http://www.livesandletters.ac.uk/wd/index.html
94
The Newton Project, http://www.newtonproject.sussex.ac.uk; The Chymistry of Isaac Newton, http://www.
chymistry.org
Forman and Richard Napier.95 This is in addition to the vast number of scattered
primary sources that can be traced to different websites by simply typing terms of
interest into Google. A special mention is due to Adam McLean’s Alchemy Website,
which is largely a single-handed effort and arguably the longest-lived alchemy-related
resource online.96 Even though its structure and some of its contents are not
strictly academic, this website provides an astonishing wealth of starting points and
resources for researchers and the public alike, and contributes to maintaining
some sense of rigour in the midst of the pseudo-alchemical New Age esotericism and
neo-romantic gibberish that inundates the internet.
Many younger researchers still feel that publishing “the book” is a necessary rite
of passage to establish themselves in the field. Current systems for assessment of
research output at British universities also favour the printed book — as do
many academics. Without disdaining traditional books, a key challenge for future
academics, in alchemy and beyond, will be the development of equivalent peer-review
systems that help to tease out the quality and reliability of online resources, and also
award the academic credit due to those behind them.
The next twenty years

The above pages have presented some partial and personal highlights selected from
the multitude of exciting developments in the recent historiography of alchemy.
Further historiographical strands could have been addressed, including novel
approaches to Jewish and Islamic alchemy,97 advances in our understanding of
alchemical Hermeticism and symbolism,98 the very relevant art–nature debate,99
95
The Casebooks Project, http://www.hps.cam.ac.uk/casebooks
96
The Alchemy Web Site, http://www.alchemywebsite.com
97
G. Ferrario, “Origins and Transmission of the Liber de aluminibus et salibus,” in Principe, Chymists and
Chymistry, 137–48; G. Ferrario, “An Arabic Dictionary of Technical Alchemical Terms: MS Sprenger 1908 of
the Staatsbibliothek zu Berlin (fols. 3r–6r),” Ambix 56, no. 1 (2009): 36–48; G. Ferrario, “The Jews and
Alchemy: Notes for a Problematic Approach,” in López Pérez, Kahn and Rey Bueno, Chymia: Science and
Nature, 19–29; S. Moureau, “Some Considerations Concerning the Alchemy of the De anima in arte alchemi-
ae of Pseudo-Avicenna,” Ambix 56, no. 1 (2009): 49–56; S. Moureau, “Questions of Methodology about
Pseudo-Avicenna’s De anima in arte alchemiae: Identification of a Latin Translation and Method of Edition,”
in López Pérez, Kahn and Rey Bueno, Chymia: Science and Nature, 1–18.
98
Especially on Khunrath, see: P. J. Forshaw, “Alchemy in the Amphitheatre: Some Consideration of the
Alchemical Content of the Engravings in Heinrich Khunrath’s Amphitheatre of Eternal Wisdom (1609),” in
Art and Alchemy, ed. J. Wamberg (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2005), 154–76; P. J. Forshaw,
“Curious Knowledge and Wonder-working Wisdom in the Occult Works of Heinrich Khunrath,” in Curios-
ity and Wonder from the Renaissance to the Enlightenment, ed. R. J. W. Evans and A. Marr (Aldershot:
Ashgate, 2006), 107–29; P. J. Forshaw, “Subliming Spirits: Physical-chemistry and Theo-alchemy in the Works
of Heinrich Khunrath (1560–1605),” in Linden, Mystical Metal of Gold, 255–75; and P. J. Forshaw,
“Oratorim-Auditorium-Laboratorium: Early Modern Improvisations on Cabala, Music, and Alchemy,” Aries
10, no. 2 (2010): 169–95. More generally, note Early Science and Medicine 5, no. 2 (2000), devoted to alchemy
and hermeticism.
99
See: B. Obrist, “Art et nature dans l’alchimie médiévale,” Revue d’Histoire des Sciences 49 (1996): 215–86;
B. Bensaude-Vincent and W. R. Newman, ed., Promethean Ambitions; The Artificial and the Natural: an
Evolving Polarity (Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press, 2007), especially the editors’ Introduction; and S. Weeks,
“Francis Bacon and the Art–Nature Distinction,” Ambix 54, no. 2 (2007): 117–45.
studies of alchemy in art100 and literature,101 and many more studies on alchemy’s
medical orientations than can be cited here — to name but a few strands. Also worth
investigating systematically are contrasts in study topics and strategies — between
research produced in English and in other languages, between Western and Eastern
alchemy, and between metallurgical and medical alchemy — to shed light on
the extent to which differences in approach are shaped by their sources or simply by
differing research traditions.
It would, of course, be either naïve or arrogant to assume that the historiography

of alchemy is stimulating today only because of the work carried out in the last
twenty years. It would be particularly unforgivable to do so in a volume that
marks the seventy-fifth anniversary of a society that has done so much to bring the
history of alchemy and chemistry to its current state. In fact, we can only speak of
“revisionism” or “New Historiography of Alchemy” by virtue of an “Old Historiog-
raphy” produced more from personal devotion and ingenuity than from institutional
support or recognition. The ambitious and sometimes less reflective narratives of
pioneer historians of alchemy and chemistry continue to provide useful models that
the current generation of scholars, employing critical approaches, can test, correct,
and, where necessary, knock down. More specifically, all of the topics mentioned
here — from the very definition of “alchemy” in the East and in the West, to the
informative potential of material culture, and including alchemy’s connections with
patronage, crafts, medicine, philosophy, and esotericism, or even its role in the
development of modern science — can, to various extents, be glimpsed in the work
of Lynn Thorndike, E. J. Holmyard, J. R. Partington, F. Sherwood Taylor, Walter
Pagel, Robert P. Multhauf, John Read, J. R. Forbes, C. S. Smith, and Allen Debus.
Having reviewed the state of the art, we should try to envision where the
historiography of alchemy will be — or indeed, where it should be — by the time
that the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry reaches the age of one
hundred years. With the discipline in such a healthy state, it would seem safe and
sensible to simply expect more of the same: more high-resolution case studies from
different regions, more critical editions of primary sources (especially online), and
more studies of alchemical practitioners and their interplay with their technological
and intellectual settings. However, with the excitement of what seems to be a new
age comes a new set of important challenges.
One of the greatest risks in the current and future historiography of alchemy may
be, paradoxically, its disgregation. As we grow more and more wary of the grand
narratives and generalisations of previous scholarship and focus, instead, on detailed
microhistories, we risk drifting into a myriad of isolated case studies without an
100
For example: A. Adams and S. J. Linden, ed., Emblems and Alchemy (Glasgow: Glasgow Emblem Studies,
1998); and L. M. Principe and L. DeWitt, Transmutations. Alchemy in Art: Selected Works from the Eddleman
and Fisher Collections at the Chemical Heritage Foundation (Philadelphia, Penn.: Chemical Heritage
Foundation, 2002).
101
S. J. Linden, Darke Hierogliphicks. Alchemy in English Literature from Chaucer to the Restoration (Lexing-
ton, Ken.: The University Press of Kentucky, 1996); D. Kahn, “Alchemical Poetry in Medieval and Early
Modern Europe: A Preliminary Survey and Synthesis Part I — Preliminary Survey,” Ambix 57, no. 3 (2010):
249–74; D. Kahn, “Alchemical Poetry in Medieval and Early Modern Europe: A Preliminary Survey and
Synthesis Part II — Synthesis,” Ambix 58, no. 1 (2011): 62–77.
exploration of their mutual relevance.102 Like historical novels, such localised

histories are often beautifully written; they can engage real stories of human
ambition, struggle, and discovery. However, if our discipline is to retain its dynamism
and significance, we ought to use these case studies to keep posing and addressing
wider questions that cut across temporal, geographical and specialist boundaries.
This is the only way to keep the work of historians of alchemy relevant to one
other and, crucially, to many sister disciplines. Although I do not wish to dictate
approaches, we can spot some larger topics in the trends discussed above: the
historical definition of alchemy and chemistry as self-identified disciplines; the
marginalisation of transmutational alchemy as a fringe occupation and its distortion
into secret and hermetical societies; the transfer and adaptation of alchemical
knowledge from East to West; patronage, fraud, and the status of alchemy between
the mechanical and liberal arts; alchemical experimentation with minerals, metals and
glass beyond chrysopoeia; the feedback between laboratory practice and medical
alchemy; and the role of alchemy in the Scientific Revolution. Thankfully, the list is
potentially very long — but it should not be endless. If there are as many topics as
there are researchers, there is a danger of diluting the power of the history of alchemy
too much.103
A more practical challenge is inherent in the seemingly bipolar sets of skills
required to conduct research on the history of alchemy. If we are to explain the
historical interplay between alchemical theory and practice, we can only do so by
combining, at the very least, historical research with scientific knowledge. There is
no alternative to this. The history of alchemy will have to move from the individual
scholarship that still predominates to more structured multidisciplinary efforts
involving historians and chemists, and also, potentially, philologists, palaeographers,
art historians, archaeologists, materials scientists, geologists, metallurgists, and
physicians. As “historian of alchemy” emerges as a profession in its own right, we
should ensure that relevant university curricula include training in both history and
science. Otherwise, the real substance of historical alchemy will be lost in the gaps
between academic specialisation. It is sometimes frustrating to find historians of
alchemy classified according to whether they work primarily on, for example,
practical alchemy, debates on transmutation, alchemical symbolism, or chymiatria.
102
Similar concerns have been expressed in Principe, “A Revolution Nobody Noticed?”
103
The progressive fragmentation of the history of alchemy into a diversity of focalised studies may also be
favoured by the particular status of present-day alchemy (and self-styled alchemists) when compared with
historical alchemy. In the field of chemistry, there has been a progressive “loss of identity” of the discipline:
its public reputation is damaged by spurious associations with chemical weapons, pollution, and infamous
pharmaceutical companies; the number of graduates continues to decrease; and its actual remit of operation
is engulfed by biomedical science, materials science, and nanotechnology. This has had implications for
the historiography of chemistry, with some scholars adopting the questionable approach of using historical
perspectives to restore the status and reputation of chemistry’s present-day manifestation — thus indirectly
creating a more cohesive historiographical body. The history of alchemy has not been conditioned in this way,
as the connections between pre-1800 alchemy and present-day alchemy are rather tenuous, and few — if any
— historians of alchemy would express concern for the reputation of today’s alchemy. This freedom should
not stop researchers from trying to identify research priorities. On modern perceptions of chemistry, see:
P. Morris, “Chemistry in the 21st Century: Death or Transformation?,” in Bertomeu-Sánchez, Burns and
Van Tiggelen, Neighbours and Territories, 329–334; and B. Bensaude-Vincent and J. Simon, Chemistry: The
Impure Science (London: Imperial College Press, 2008).
These are all facets of the same entity, and our own limitations as researchers should
be no excuse for artificially segregating them. For now, we have one another to rely
on; for the future, we should also have interdisciplinary training.
The last issue to keep our eye on is not found in the historiography as such but
remains very relevant to it, as it pertains to the dissemination of our work beyond
the scholarly readership of journals such as Ambix. We may have Harry Potter to
thank for sparking a conspicuous wave of public interest in alchemy. Be that as it
may, scholars are frequently spotted contributing to television and radio programmes,
popular magazines and public talks in which the history of alchemy is necessarily
simplified but still treated with rigour. Adapting the output of our research to a
diverse range of target audiences, including “laypeople,” is not only inspiring and
rewarding, but crucially fulfils our duty of giving something back to those whose
heritage we study, and who ultimately sponsor the work that we enjoy doing. In the
medium term, the key to achieving a more lasting impact may be in the engagement
of school and university teachers — who will, in due course, yield more inspired and
better trained students to our field and others. The history of alchemy is unlikely to
become a core subject of secondary education. Introduced as a footnote or as a
names-and-dates-loaded introductory page in chemistry textbooks, it will not
stimulate many students. Yet the history of alchemy impinges on such a diversity of
disciplines that it may potentially be integrated into the teaching of political and
economic history, the history of science and technology, the study of world religions,
and even the history of art. Both failed and successful alchemical experiments can be
replicated in order to teach physics and chemistry, comparing ancient and modern
perceptions of what takes place within the reaction vessels. At a more fundamental
level, the quest for metallic transmutation or the Elixir can be used to teach students
that today’s scientific facts are tomorrow’s myths, and that science can only develop
through big hypotheses, painstaking trial-and-error, and serendipity.
Acknowledgements
I am very grateful to the Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry for
inviting me to join the seventy-fifth anniversary celebrations, and especially to two
anonymous reviewers and to Jenny Rampling for kindly helping me to fill some
of the many gaps in my knowledge of the historiography. This paper was written
while I was enjoying research leave sponsored through an AHRC Fellowship (number
AH/I022228/1).
Notes on Contributor
Marcos Martinón-Torres is a Senior Lecturer in Archaeological Science and Material
Culture at the Institute of Archaeology, University College London. He specialises in
the application of scientific techniques to the study of the origins, manufacture
and utilisation of archaeological artefacts, with previous and ongoing research
in Europe, America, Africa, and China. He is currently writing a book on the
archaeology of alchemy and chemistry in the early modern world. Address:
UCL Institute of Archaeology, 31–34 Gordon Square, London WC1H 0PY, UK.
Email: m.martinon-torres@ucl.ac.uk

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ambix, Vol. 58 No.

3, November, 2011, 215–37

Some Recent Developments in the

UCL Institute of Archaeology, London, UK

The number of researchers and publications devoted to the history of

in Cambridge in September 2011,4 but keen scholars had plenty of opportunity

Twenty years in a snapshot

ﬁgure 2 Word cloud for “alchemy” in JSTOR, 1930–1940.

ﬁgure 3 Word cloud for “alchemy” in JSTOR, 1960–1970.

ﬁgure 4 Word cloud for “alchemy” in JSTOR, 1990–2010.

Alchemy, chemistry, and chymistry

is a very important corollary to this revision: if alchemy in general, and gold-making

The craftsman, the magician, and the scholar

invested some of the money he earned as a medical practitioner in order to learn

alchemical theories implicit in metallurgical treatises.30 The contribution of chymistry

Networks, patrons, business, and fraudsters

of networks of people who lived in specific settings maintaining important intellectual

stimulated great interest among natural philosophers, craftspeople and consumers

Western medieval alchemy and chymiatria

philosophorum,61 the Summa perfectionis,62 and, among lesser-known manuscripts,

authoritative volume on Paracelsianism in France presents a detailed and colourful

Material culture and alchemical practice

of laboratory instruments. These are sometimes supplemented by the experimental

entrepreneurs in Jamestown, Virginia.83 Besides the analysis and processing of noble

Primary sources and digital resources

The next twenty years

It would, of course, be either naïve or arrogant to assume that the historiography

exploration of their mutual relevance.102 Like historical novels, such localised

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