A Chymist Among Beasts: Reading Paracelsus Literally (with a translation of De lunaticis, chapter two).

Paracelsus is an extraordinarily difficult author to interpret, in part because of the seemingly elusive boundary between literal and metaphorical levels of meaning in his work. The present paper argues for a literal reading of Paracelsus, based on comments that he makes in his late Philosophia de divinis operibus & factis & de secretis naturae. The article also includes a translated chapter from one of the treatises in that work, De lunaticis.

Bad Chemistry: Basilisks and Women in Paracelsus and pseudo-Paracelsus.

The basilisk of the pseudo-Paracelsian De natura rerum is the evil twin of the homunculus. Created from menstrual blood by artificial ectogenesis in an alchemical laboratory, the basilisk embodies the poisonous character traditionally ascribed to catamenial women, but magnified and concentrated by its mode of generation to the degree that it can kill by its glance alone. How does this remarkable thought experiment relate to other instances of the basilisk in the genuine and pseudonymous corpus of Paracelsus? The present paper outlines two primary uses which emerge repeatedly: first, in works other than De natura rerum, the basilisk is used by Paracelsus and his imitators as a means of explaining action at a distance, especially in the case of plague. Relying on a medieval association between the basilisk's deadly gaze and the putative ability of menstruating women to damage mirrors, the genuine Paracelsus links contagious disease to the deleterious action of the female imagination. Second, because the basilisk was traditionally held to be the product of an unnatural birth, being born from an egg laid by a rooster and incubated by a toad, the Paracelsian corpus frequently invokes the monster as a model for unnatural generation in general.

Mercury and sulphur among the High Medieval alchemists: from Razi and Avicenna to Albertus Magnus and pseudo-Roger Bacon.

This essay challenges the often expressed view that the principles of metals, namely mercury and sulphur, were generally viewed by alchemists as being of a 'metaphysical' character that made them inaccessible to the tools and operations of the laboratory. By examining a number of Arabo-Latin and Latin alchemical texts in circulation before the end of the thirteenth century, the author presents evidence that most alchemists of the period considered mercury and sulphur to be materials subject to techniques of purification in the same way that naturally occurring salts and minerals could be freed of their impurities or dross. The article also points to the immense influence of Avicenna and Albertus Magnus in formulating the theory that mercury and sulphur were compounds of different materials, containing both fixed and unfixed components. Finally, the author briefly examines the relationship between this materialist approach to the principles and the chymical atomism of early modern authors who were deeply aware of medieval alchemical literature.

Robert Boyle, Transmutation, and the History of Chemistry before Lavoisier: A Response to Kuhn.

In an influential article of 1952, Thomas Kuhn argued that Robert Boyle had little or no influence on the subsequent development of chemistry. This essay challenges Kuhn's view on two fronts. First, it shows that Johann Joachim Becher developed his hierarchical matter theory under the influence of Boyle and then transmitted it to the founder of the phlogiston theory, G. E. Stahl. Second, this essay argues that transmutational matter theories were not necessarily opposed to the existence of stable chemical species, pace Kuhn. Boyle's corpuscular theory descended largely from the tradition of "chymical atomism," which often advocated both chrysopoeia and the reality of robust chemical substances.

What have we learned from the recent historiography of alchemy?

Over the last two decades a new scholarship on alchemy has emerged, leading to a fundamental reformulation of knowledge about alchemists and their activities. We now know that medieval and early modern alchemists employed experiment in concert with theory to demonstrate the existence of stable "chymical atoms," which were thought to combine with one another according to a hierarchical theory of matter. Employing laboratory-based analysis and synthesis, alchemists were among the first explicitly to enunciate the principle of mass balance and to show that materials are compounded of the ingredients into which they can be physically decomposed. Perhaps even more surprisingly, these convictions and practices arose out of the interaction of alchemical practice with scholastic Aristotelianism, long viewed by historians of the Scientific Revolution as antithetical to experiment. Thus the new historiography challenges both a long-standing marginalization of alchemy itself and a commonplace view of Aristotelianism as inimical to the early modern growth of experimental science.