Contents
1. Introduction
2. Vitriol in Antiquity
3. Vitriol in Arabic Alchemy
4. Vitriol in Indian Alchemy
5. Vitriol in European Alchemy and Mineral Industry
6. Vitriol and the Mineral Acids
6.1. Nitric Acid
6.2. Sulfuric Acid
7. Conclusions
1. Introduction
Although chemistry is widely considered among its practitioners to be a modern science, technological processes based on chemical reactions have been in standard use from the distant past. The production of salts, dyes and paints, cosmetics, and fermented beverages made use of techniques and reactions common to chemical experimentation (such as filtration, dissolution, and sublimation).
Among these early crafts, metallurgy involved a widening knowledge of metals and their
alloys, and entailed the recognition of certain stones as metallic ores. However, these activities seem to represent only a practical, applied use of chemical processes. Although craft--workers may have developed their own concepts regarding the substances involved in a given process, records of such
ideas have not come down to us, and the discoveries and improvements they made seem to have been based largely on a trial-and-error approach.
The ancient considerations on the nature of matter that have come down to us were composed by philosophers who considered the problem of change. In attempting to understand the objects of the natural world and the changes these objects undergo, the idea of earth, air, fire, and water as material
elements was first postulated by the Greek natural philosopherEmpedocles (492-432 BC), and was brought into its most well known form by Aristotle (384-322 BC). Analogous theories appeared around the same time in China (fire, earth, water metal, and wood) and India (earth, water, fire, air, and space)1
.
Western alchemy appears to have arisen in Hellenistic Egypt and the Near East during the last couple of centuries BC, in conjunction with several mystical sects and the increasingly common craft practices of creating imitation precious stones and metals 2. Although it lacked the logical rigor of earlier Greek philosophies, alchemy nonetheless attempted to engage the complex world of chemical processes and mineral substances in a scientific way, which eventually led to ideas involving the transmutation of base metals into precious ones and the preparation of a substance for extending the human life-span. The term protochemistry is often used to refer to some of these activities, and it is this aspect of alchemical activity with which the present work is concerned
Department of Physical and Macromolecular Chemistry
and JOHN A. NORRIS
Department of Philosophy and History of Natural Sciences,
Faculty of Science, Charles University,
Albertov 6, 128 43
Prague 2
e-mail: karpenko@natur.cuni.cz
Received 20.XII.2001
Keywords: alchemy, mineralogy, vitriols, sulfates, nitric acid,
sulfuric acid, ar-R·zÌ, Pseudo-Geberian corpus
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