Mercury alone theory

Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic andExperimental Science (New York Columbia University Press, 1934), vol. 3, pp. 58, 89-90, 160, 179, 624, and passim. Thorndike did not realize that Geber was the originator of the mercury alone theory instead he attributed it to Arnald of Villanova. See Newman, Pseudo-Geber, pp. 204-208. 

Jabir introduced a theory, which was to influence much of later alchemy, that metals were mixtures of sulfur, mercury, and arsenic, except for gold, which was made up of sulfur and mercury alone. The sulfur and mercury of which Jabir spoke were not the substances found in nature. They were purified essences which European alchemists later called philosophical sulfur and philosophical mercury. They were supposed to be quite unlike the common substances. For example, it was said that philosophical sulfur didn t burn. According to Jabir, of all the metals, gold contained the most mercury and the least sulfur. Thus other metals could be transformed into gold if ways were found to increase their mercury content. 

Stephen Touhnin rejected the positivist-Whig notion of instant rationality according to which, in 1775, Lavoisier used the crucial experiment on the calcination and revivification of mercury by heat alone to discredit the phlogiston theory and establish the oxygen theory. As Toulmin noted, Priesdey responded to this experiment in 1783 with a crucial experiment of his own. Priestley appealed to the reaction between minium (lead oxide) and inflammable air (hydrogen) over water as a counter demonstration , in which the phlogiston... 

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