1 Alchemy, nature Arabs

Al-Razi (Rhazes, 854-925) was a Persian who studied in Baghdad. Al-Razi wrote extensively on medicine, philosophy, astronomy, and alchemy, but he was primarily a physician. Al-Razi was less mystical than his contemporary alchemists and classified chemicals by their origin. According to Al-Razi, chemicals came from either animals, plants, and minerals or were derived from other chemicals. Al-Razi wrote The Comprehensive Book, which was an enormous medical encyclopedia that synthesized medical practices of ancient Greeks, Syrians, Arabs, and Persians. Al-Razi was the first person known to describe the disease smallpox. Most of his alchemical writings have been lost, but Al-Razi believed in the atomic nature of matter. Al-Razi took a systematic approach to science and rejected the idea of divine intervention. His rational methods and descriptions were more consistent with modern science than most individuals of his time. Ali al Husayn ibn Sina (Avicenna, 980-1037) was another Persian physician whose voluminous works, including The... 

Alchemy s earliest texts, written in Greek in the first through the third centuries CE, were inherited and taken up by natural philosophers writing in Arabic in the seventh through the tenth centuries. 

The second half of the 18th century was also the exact period when the transition from alchemy to modem chemistry took place. Incidentally, although the Japanese word for alchemy (renkinjutsu, which originates in Chinese word and translates as hermetic arts ) seems to have occult connotations, the English counterpart alchemy takes its al fi-om the Arabic article for the, suggesting a more natural sense of continuity between alchemy and chemistry. ... 

---