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Alchemy, ancient art practiced especially in the Middle Ages, devoted chiefly

to discovering a substance that would transmute the more common metals into

gold or silver and to finding a means of indefinitely prolonging human life.

Although its purposes and techniques were dubious and often illusory, alchemy

was in many ways the predecessor of modern science, especially the science of

chemistry.

The birthplace of alchemy was ancient Egypt, where, in Alexandria, it began to

flourish in the Hellenistic period; simultaneously, a school of alchemy was

developing in China. The writings of some of the early Greek philosophers might

be considered to contain the first chemical theories; and the theory advanced

in the 5th century BC by Empedocles—that all things are composed of air, earth,

fire, and water—was influential in alchemy. The Roman emperor Caligula is said

to have instituted experiments for producing gold from orpiment, a sulfide of

arsenic, and the emperor Diocletian is said to have ordered all Egyptian works

concerning the chemistry of gold and silver to be burned in order to stop such

experiments. Zosimus the Theban (about AD 250-300) discovered that sulfuric

acid is a solvent of metals, and he liberated oxygen from the red oxide of

mercury.

The fundamental concept of alchemy stemmed from the Aristotelian doctrine that

all things tend to reach perfection. Because other metals were thought to be

less "perfect" than gold, it was reasonable to assume that nature formed gold

out of other metals deep within the earth and that with sufficient skill and

diligence an artisan could duplicate this process in the workshop. Efforts

toward this goal were...