Page 22 - All About History - Issue 11-14

Science

Day in the life How do we know this?
In addition to a number of sources taken from
The Alchemy Website, the book Transforming
Matter: A History Of Chemistry From Alchemy To
The Buckyball proved to be of great use, going into
ALCHEMIST of alchemists and some of its most noteworthy
detail about the various aspects of the daily life
practitioners, such as Robert Boyle and Isaac
Newton. The text also touches upon their views
and how they were influenced by the likes of
Aristotle and Paracelsus.
EXPERIMENTING WITH DIFFERENT CHEMICAL
SUBSTANCES AND SEEKING THE MEANING

OF LIFE, EUROPE, 17TH CENTURY

Alchemists were the magicians of their generation. Through their
experiments with chemistry and the study of the properties of
various materials, they sought to discover the secrets of the material
world. This was geared towards mass-producing valuable metals
like gold, but the ultimate goal of many alchemists was to create
the fabled Philosopher’s Stone, through which its beneficiary
could obtain the elixir of youth, and with it immortality. This
profession was often a dangerous one for those concerned,
with many budding alchemists being tortured and
even killed for its practice. Discover more about
the daily life of these practitioners…
ARRANGING LABORATORY

In a field of work that was often concerned
with attaining the power of higher beings, it is
not surprising that many alchemists were very
superstitious people. With some of them, this
manifested itself in an interest in various branches
of astrology, with their laboratories often being laid
out as if they were in a temple, based on specific
cosmic convergences.

SETTING UP EQUIPMENT

With alchemists’ work involving a wide
variety of tasks by its very nature, a lot
of equipment was required. In a typical
laboratory, a furnace and vessels were
needed, along with items like a gridiron,
iron rod, shovel, mortar and an iron plate, in
addition to various dishes, funnels, crucibles An alchemist
and receptacles. filling drug jars

STUDYING PROPERTIES OF
MATERIALS

In order to stay abreast of their ever-changing
subject matter, alchemists were frequently studying
and learning. As well as perusing texts related to
their work, they experimented on and analysed
various materials in an attempt to discover the
secrets that could lead to them manipulating
certain substances that would enable them to make
a scientific breakthrough.

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