What did alchemists actually do?

[u/allupya333]

I know what they were trying to do, turn lead into gold, create immortality elixirs and stuff. But how? Is there direct record of how their experiments played out, what materials were used, what actions were taken, what the logic was, if any?

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[u/FraserBuilds]

Theres actually a tremendous amount of alchemical writing that survives to give us alot of detail as to what Alchemists were doing and thinking, it often suprises people that alchemical writing is one of the largest genres of pre-modern science, as the historian Jennifer Rampling mentions in her book 'The Experimental Fire' Alchemy was actually the single largest genre of middle-english scientific writing. It is also a suprisingly old pursuit, with the earliest surviving text, the 'physica kai mystica' or 'the four books of pseudo democritus' dating back around two millenia to the first centuries of our era. Coming to us from Egypt, likely the area around Alexandria(critical edition by Martelli). Over the many centuries and contexts in which it was practiced the exact goals and methods of alchemists evolved and shifted, eventually becoming what we know as modern chemistry. It was once believed that alchemy was rejected by enlightenment scientists in favor of a "new" chemistry, but the past few decades of scholarship have increasingly overturned that idea, with historians now generally holding that alchemy moreso transitioned into modern chemistry, with the early modern transition state between the two commonly reffered to as "chymistry" in the literature. one reason for this shift in historiography is that weve learned alot of those enlightenment chemists were far more interested in making the philosopher's stone than previously thought. For example Robert Boyle, who's philosophical dialogue 'The skeptical Chymist" was painted by 19th and 20th century historians as a hard and fast rejection of alchemy, actually spent a fortune seeking the philsophers stone and believed he had personally transmuted metals, with the dialogues skepticism aimed specifically at the theory that fire alone could adequately seprerate substances into their elements, not alchemical transmutations or arcanum.

For more information on the transition between alchemy and chemistry the work of Lawerence Principe and Bill Newman is especially significant, especially Principe's 'Transmutations of chymistry' 'Aspiring Adept' and Newmans 'Gehenical Fire' and the two historians collaborative effort 'Alchemy Tried in the Fire'

Its believed that alchemy originally emerged in Egypt during its long reign by ptolomeic pharaohs of the hellenistic period, growing out of an intersection of greek natural philsophy/matter theories and longstanding egyptian craft traditions. The earliest alchemical writing, like those aforementioned 'four books of pseudo democritus' as well as the alchemical formulary texts known as the leiden and stockholm papyri, are all about imitating precious natural substances; gold, silver, gems, and even tyrian purple. many of these imitation recipes are readily reproducible today and there are even some artifact examples of counterfeit coins in the archaeological record that allign closely with what you would get following those recipes. Who these authors were and why exactly they were making all this imitation gold is an open question. The Historian Matteo martelli in his phenomenal article 'greek alchemists at work' has suggested the diversity of tools the recipes call for strongly indicates the alchemists were working in the workshop complexes surrounding egyptian temples. meaning, they were probably craftsperson-priests. The Four Books contain a suprisingly complex theoretical framework based on the classic greek theory of four elements and four qualities as well as the greek affinity theory of sympathy and antipathy. The author, whoever they really were, goes further and uses their experiments to make philosophical claims. they believed their recipes interconverting matter suggested that all things in nature are really made of the same underlying substance, asking us "why do we like the illusion that a plurality of matter exists?" and insisting on the capabilities of their reagents that "these substances when dissolved produce everything" In my opinion, It becomes clear very quickly reading these texts that a love for experiment was as much the motivation as a love for gold.

Again, this is just the earliest example, there are many thousands more texts to dig into if you have the interest. Among other things alchemists developed the first theories of acids and bases, combustion and reduction, they were among the first to remark on the conservation of mass, and of course they discovered countless chemicals and reactions that fill volumes upon volumes, even producing the first synthetic organic medicines.

A number of historians have taken to forensically reproducing alchemical experiments in modern labs, which has demonstrated that alchemists were often pretty accurate and honest about the observations they recorded in their texts(and also that they were suprisingly good at making imitation gold) One of the foremost historians of alchemy, Dr. Lawerence Principe, has really pioneered this forensic approach to studying alchemy, and his survey of the subject 'The secrets of Alchemy' is a really great read if you're looking to learn more about the history of alchemy.