Bernard Jaffe - Crucibles: The Story of Chemistry From Ancient Alchemy to Nuclear Fission

DE RE METALLICA, Georgius Agricola. (0-486-60006-8)

THE ABYSS OF TIME: UNRAVELING THE MYSTERY OF THE EARTHS AGE, Claude C. Albritton, Jr. (0-486-42556-8)

MATHEMATICS FOR QUANTUM CHEMISTRY, Jay Martin Anderson. (0-486-44230-6)

THE PHYSICS OF BLOWN SAND AND DESERT DUNES, R. A. Bagnold. (0-486-43931-3)

CLOUD PHYSICS: A POPULAR INTRODUCTION TO APPLIED METEOROLOGY, Louis J. Battan. (0-486-42885-0)

SEISMIC WAVES AND SOURCES, Ari Ben-Menahem and Sarva Jit Singh. (0-486-40461-7)

GROUP THEORY AND CHEMISTRY, David M. Bishop. (0-486-67355-3)

THE SCEPTICAL CHYMIST, Robert Boyle. (0-486-42825-7)

CHEMICAL AND CATALYTIC REACTION ENGINEERING, James J. Carberry. (0-486-41736-0)

RANDOM FIELD MODELS IN EARTH SCIENCES, George Christakos. (0-486-43872-4)

HANDBOOK OF COMPUTATIONAL QUANTUM CHEMISTRY, David B. Cook. (0-486-44307-8)

MOLECULAR QUANTUM ELECTRODYNAMICS, D. P. Craig and T. Thirunamachandran. (0-486-40214-2)

RADIOACTIVE SUBSTANCES, Marie Curie. (0-486-42550-9)

STATISTICAL MECHANICS, Norman Davidson. (0-486-43264-5)

THE CHEMICAL PHILOSOPHY, Allen G. Debus. (0-486-42175-9)

CHEMICAL MAGIC, Leonard A. Ford. (0-486-67628-5)

SYMMETRY AND SPECTROSCOPY: AN INTRODUCTION TO VIBRATIONAL AND ELECTRONIC SPECTROSCOPY, Daniel C. Harris and Michael D. Bertolucci. (0-486-66144-X)

FREE ENERGY TRANSDUCTION AND BIOCHEMICAL CYCLE KINETICS, Terrell L. Hill. (0-486-44194-6)

ALCHEMY, E. J. Holmyard. (0-486-26298-7)

CHEMICAL KINETICS AND REACTION DYNAMICS, Paul L. Houston. (0-486-45334-0)

CRYSTAL CHEMISTRY AND REFRACTIVITY, Howard W. Jaffe. (0-486-69173-X)

SYMMETRY IN CHEMISTRY, Hans H. Jaff and Milton Orchin. (0-486-42181-3)

PROBLEMS AND SOLUTIONS IN QUANTUM CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS, Charles S. Johnson and Lee G. Pedersen. (0-486-65236-X)

THEORY OF SATELLITE GEODESY: APPLICATIONS OF SATELLITES TO GEODESY, William M. Kaula. (0-486-41465-5)

ELEMENTS OF CHEMISTRY, Antoine Lavoisier. (0-486-64624-6)

FLUVIAL PROCESSES IN GEOMORPHOLOGY, Luna B. Leopold, M. Gordon Wolman, John P. Miller. (0-486-68588-8)

QUANTUM MECHANICS OF MOLECULAR RATE PROCESSES, Raphael D. Levine. (0-486-40692-X)

THE GEOLOGICAL EVIDENCE OF THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN, Charles Lyell. (0-486-43576-8)

MAGNETISM AND TRANSITION METAL COMPLEXES, F. E. Mabbs and D. J. Machin. (0-486-46284-6)

ELEMENTARY CHEMICAL THERMODYNAMICS, Bruce H. Mahan. (0-486-45054-6)

THE PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY OF THE SEA AND ITS METEOROLOGY, Matthew Fontaine Maury. (0-486-43248-3)

SPINS IN CHEMISTRY, Roy McWeeny. (0-486-43486-9)

MENDELEEV ON THE PERIODIC LAW: SELECTED WRITINGS, 1869 1905, Dmitri Ivanovich Mendeleev. Selected and edited by William B. Jensen. (0-486-44571-2)

ELEMENTS OF STATISTICAL THERMODYNAMICS: SECOND EDITION, Leonard K. Nash. (0-486-44978-5)

GENERAL CHEMISTRY, Linus Pauling. (0-486-65622-5)

ELECTROLYTE SOLUTIONS: SECOND REVISED EDITION, R. A. Robinson and R. H. Stokes. (0-486-42225-9)

TRANSPORT PROCESSES IN CHEMICALLY REACTING FLOW SYSTEMS, Daniel E. Rosner. (0-486-41182-6)

MOLECULAR THEORY OF CAPILLARITY, J. S. Rowlinson and B. Widom. (0-486-42544-4)

INTRODUCTION TO CRYSTALLOGRAPHY, Donald E. Sands. (0-486-67839-3)

PRINCIPLES OF METEOROLOGICAL ANALYSIS, Walter J. Saucier. (0-486-49541-8)

QUANTUM MECHANICS IN CHEMISTRY, George C. Schatz and Mark A. Ratner. (0-486-42003-5)

MOLECULES AND RADIATION: AN INTRODUCTION TO MODERN MOLECULAR SPECTROSCOPY. SECOND EDITION, Jeffrey I. Steinfeld. (0-486-44152-0)

MODERN QUANTUM CHEMISTRY: INTRODUCTION TO ADVANCED ELECTRONIC STRUCTURE THEORY, Attila Szabo and Neil S. Ostlund. (0-486-69186-1)

GROUP THEORY AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, Michael Tinkham. (0-486-43247-5)

GROUP THEORY IN CHEMISTRY AND SPECTROSCOPY: A SIMPLE GUIDE TO ADVANCED USAGE, Boris S. Tsukerblat. (0-486-45035-X)

THEORY OF THE STABILITY OF LYOPHOBIC COLLOIDS, E. J. W. Verwey and J. Th. G. Overbeek. (0-486-40929-5)

ELECTRON CORRELATION IN MOLECULES, S. Wilson. (0-486-45879-2)

MOLECULAR VIBRATIONS: THE THEORY OF INFRARED AND RAMAN VIBRATIONAL SPECTRA, E. Bright Wilson, Jr., J. C. Decius and Paul C. Cross. (0-486-63941-X)

MATERIAL CONCEPTS IN SURFACE REACTIVITY AND CATALYSIS, Henry Wise and Jacques Oudar. (0-486-41978-9)

See every Dover book in print at www.doverpublications.com

Outposts of Science

New World of Chemistry

Men of Science in America

Chemical Calculations

New World of Science (with R. W. Burnett and H. S. Zim)

Michelson and the Speed of Light

Chemistry, Science of Matter, Energy and Change

(with Gregory Choppin)

Chemistry Creates a New World

Moseley and the Numbering of the Elements

Copyright 1930, 1942, 1948 by Bernard Jaffe and The Forum Printing Corp. Copyright 1976 by Bernard Jaffe. All rights reserved.

This Dover edition, first published in 1976, is a revised and enlarged republication of the work originally published by Simon and Schuster, New York, in 1930.

9780486141848

Library of Congress Catalog Card Number: 75-38070

Manufactured in the United States by Courier Corporation

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To Rindy, Mandy and David

There is first the groping after causes, and then the struggle to frame laws. There are intellectual revolutions, bitter controversial conflicts, and the crash and wreck of fallen philosophies.

FRANCIS P. VENABLE

HE LOOKS FOR GOLD IN A DUNGHILL

IN THE dark interior of an old laboratory cluttered with furnaces, crucibles, alembics, stills and bellows, bends an old man in the act of hardening two thousand hens eggs in huge pots of boiling water. Carefully he removes the shells and gathers them into a great heap. These he heats in a gentle flame until they are white as snow, while his co-laborer separates the whites from the yolks and putrifies them all in the manure of white horses. For eight long years the strange products are distilled and redistilled for the extraction of a mysterious white liquid and a red oil.

With these potent universal solvents the two alchemists hope to fashion the philosophers stone. At last the day of final testing comes. Again the breath-taking suspense, againFailure!their stone will not turn a single one of the base metals into the elusive gold.

Secretly had the old man worked at first, for had not the Arabian master of alchemy, Geber himself, admonished his disciples: For heavens sake do not let the facility of making gold lead you to divulge this proceeding or to show it to any of those around you, to your wife, or your cherished child, and still less to any other person. If you do not heed this advice you will repent when repentance is too late. If you divulge this work, the world will be corrupted, for gold would then be made as easily as glass is made for the bazaars.

The quest of the Golden Grail obsessed him. As far back as he could remember, Bernard Trevisan had thought and dreamed of nothing else. Born in 1406 of a distinguished family of Padua, oldest of the northern Italian cities, he had been reared on his grandfathers stories of the great search of the alchemists. Stories of failures, all, but he would succeed where others had failed. Encouraged by his parents, Bernard began his great adventure at the age of fourteen. His family approved, for they hoped to multiply the young heirs patrimony a thousandfold. But as the years of failure passed and his fortune slowly dwindled they lost faith as others had done. They pitied him and attributed his pursuit of alchemy to nothing short of madness.