Mercury transmutation

The author traces the positions that writers of histories of chemistry took toward alchemy as a total phenomenon, how they regarded the experimental-practical and philosophicoreligious components of it and what stand-points they adopted relative to such alchemical theories as the doctrine of transmutation and the sulfur-mercury theory... 

As we have seen, though the radiochemists efforts had not led to docu-mentable transmutations in the pre-War era, Rutherford had been able to effect the first atomic transmutation in 1919. Miethe s supposed mercury-to-gold transmutations in 1924 had set off a wave of new efforts by chemists, and in the late 1920s and early 1930s—when Gernsback s pulps were... 

Recently, we were reading in the daily papers and in the scientific journals, about the transmutation of mercury into gold. With our present theories of chemistry, this appears to us to be not only a possibility, but even a probability. In this story Edgar Allan Poe once more appears in the role of scientific prophet—a role which he so often filled. What he describes in this story, written nearly a century ago, is just such a transmutation as the German chemist [presumably Miethe] claims to have done—namely, the transmutation of mercury into gold. (Poe 1849, 364)... 

A. S. Russell noted that Transmutation was associated with bogus chemistry at the start of the century—there were several public announcements (and in Glasgow a company was floated) that gold or mercury had been made by transmuting lead (Howorth 90). 

Cagliostro showed no outward concern. He d begin, he said, with a demonstration of the relatively quick and straightforward transmutation of mercury to silver. On 7 June 1780, he assembled the Masons at the manor house to perform the operation under their eyes. In shirtsleeves for ease of working, both he and Moczynski also wore full aprons to protect them-... 

The alchemists believed that a most minute proportion of the Stone projected upon considerable quantities of heated mercury, molten lead, or other "base" metal, would transmute practically the whole into silver or gold. This claim of the alchemists, that a most minute quantity of the Stone was sufficient to transmute considerable quantities of base" metal, has been the object of much ridicule. Certainly, some of the claims of the alchemists (understood literally) are out of all reason but on the other hand, the disproportion between the quantities of Stone and transmuted metal cannot be advanced as an a priori objection to the alchemists claims, inasmuch that a class of chemical reactions (called "catalytic") is known, in which the presence of a small quantity of some appropriate form of matter — the catalyst — brings about a chemical change in an indefinite quantity of some other form or forms thus, for example, cane-sugar in aqueous solution is converted into two other sugars by the action of small quantities of acid and sulphur-dioxide and oxygen, which will not combine under ordinary conditions, do so readily in the presence of a small quantity... 

You may recall that the preparation of philosophical mercury was one of the steps toward creating the Philosopher s Stone. Boyle must have believed that he had learned a great secret indeed. He must have become even more excited when he discovered that heat was produced when this mercury was used to dissolve gold. According to alchemical theory, the heat was a sign that some of the mercury was being transmuted into gold. 

---