|
Monsieur L., Figuier remarked especially a young man, in whose habits
and language he could nothing in common with those of his strange
companions. He confounded the wisdom of the alchemical adept with the
tenets of the modern scientist in the most singular fashion, and meeting
him one day at the gate of the Observatory, M. Figuier renewed the
subject of their last discussion, deploring that " a man of his gifts
could pursue the semblance of a chimera." Without replying, the young
adept led him into the Observatory garden, and proceeded to reveal to
him the mysteries of modern alchemical science.
The young man proceeded to fix a limit to the researches of the modern
alchemists. Gold, he said, according to the ancient authors, as three
distinct properties: (1) that of resolving the baser metals into itself,
and interchanging and metamorphosing all metals into one another; (2)
the curing of afflictions and the prolongation of life; (3), as a
'spiritus mundi' to bring mankind into rapport with the supermundane
spheres. Modern alchemists, he continued, reject the greater part of
these ideas, especially those connected with spiritual contact. The
object of modern alchemy might be reduced to the search for a substance
having the power to transform and transmute all other substances into
one another - in short, to discover that medium so well known to the
alchemists of old and lost to us. This was a perfectly feasible
proposition. In the four principal substances of oxygen, hydrogen,
carbon, and azote, we have the tetractus of Pythagoras and the tetragram
of the Chaldeans and Egyptians. All the sixty elements are referable to
these original four. The ancient alchemical theory established the fact
that all the metals are the same in their composition, that all are
formed from sulphur and mercury, and that the difference between them is
according to the proportion of these substances in their composition.
Further, all the products of minerals present in their composition
complete identity with those substances most opposed to them. Thus
fulminating acid contains precisely the same quantity of carbon, oxygen,
and azote as cyanic acid, and "cyanhydric" acid does not differ from
formate ammoniac. This new property of matter is known as "isomerism".
M. Figuier's friend then proceeds to quote support of his thesis and
operations and experiments of M. Dumas, a celebrated French savant, as
is well known to thous of Prout, and other English chemists of standing.
Passing to consider the possibility of isomerism in elementary as well
as in compound substances, the points out to M. Figuier that id the
theory of isomerism can apply to such bodies, the transmutation of
metals ceases to be a wild, unpractical dream, and becomes a scientific
possibility, the transformation being brought about by a molecular
rearrangement. Isomerism can be established in the case of compound
substances by chemical analysis. showing the identity of their
constituent parts. In the case of metals it can be proved by the
comparison of the properties of isometric bodies with the properties of
metals, in order to discover whether they have any common
characteristics. Such experiments, he continued, had been conducted by
M. Dumas, with the result the isometric substances were to be found to
have equal equivalents, or equivalents which were exact multiples of one
another. This characteristic is also a feature of metals. Gold and
osmium have identical equivalents, as have platinum and iridium. The
equivalent of cobalt is almost the same as that of nickel, and the
semi-equivalent of tin is equal to the equivalent of the two preceding
metals.
M. Dumas. speaking before the British Association, had shown that when
three simple bodies displayed great analogies in their properties, such
as chlorine, bromide, and iodine, barium, strontium, and calcium, the
|