Knowledge of the Middle Ages

When in 1530 Henry Cornelius Agrippa in his work on The Vanity of the Arts and Sciences quoted the proverb, Every alchemist is a physician or a soapboiler, he expressed in epigrammatic form a not unimportant classification for his time, as also for centuries before. By alchemists he meant all chemists, and there were indeed two classes of chemists, those who were scholars learned in the natural philosophy of the time and versed in the doctrines of Plato, Aristotle, Galen or of the Alexandrian neoplatonists, and those on the other hand who with no pretensions to be philosophers, were engaged in the practical arts of chemistry in its various applications. 

Nevertheless such collections of recipes have been from time to time discovered. Naturally also the sources of them are obscure. They generally bear evidence of having been a growth by accessions and interpolations, often more or less confused by careless or ignorant translators or copyists. 

But such as they are they often give a definiteness and significance to the very often vague descriptions of the learned but nontechnical philosophers and encyclopedists who were nevertheless the principal distributors of information as to the progress of science in the middle ages. 

Chelidony 3 drachmas, fresh and clear resin 3 drachmas, gum of gold color 3 drachmas, brilliant orpiment 3 drachmas, bile of the tortoise 3 drachmas, white of egg 5 drachmas. The whole makes 20 drachmas. Add 7 drachmas of safran of Cilicia. You can write with it not only upon parchment or paper but also on a glass vessel or on marble. 

It is of interest to note the use of the word vitriol (vitriolum) as applied to the impure sulphate of iron produced by the weathering of pyrites. This substance was known, it will be recalled, to Pliny and Dioscorides, but the name for it was chalcanthum, green or blue. It is worthy of note also that the preparation of cinnabar by uniting mercury and sulphur occurs in this manuscript seemingly 

---

The True Identity of the Alchemical Adept Calling Himself "Fulcanelli" Has Never Been Publicly Discovered But There Are Few Who Would Not Recognize His Works As the Most Significant Contribution to the Great Art in More Than 100 Years. The Author Displays an Immense Knowledge of the Practices of Alchemy and of the Alchemists of the Middle Ages. For the First Time He Makes Clear the Differences Between... 

Toward the end of the Middle Ages (ca. 500-1450), European thinkers gathered the written lore of the ancients, combined it with knowledge acquired from Moslem cultures during the Crusades, and began to develop methods of inquiry that would begin to define modern science. One of the most important of these... 

The broad survey of the animal and plant world provided by Aristotle about 2,400 years ago included only a tiny fraction of all extant life forms. However, his compilation formed the basis of our knowledge of living things until the Middle Ages ... 

---