Abstract
Early modern alchemical literature is full of pseudonymous corpora. One of the most famous of these is connected with the name Basil Valentine, a supposed Benedictine monk and master of both ...medicinal and transmutational chymistry. Accreted over a period of nearly a century, the Valentine corpus is complex and heterogeneous. This paper endeavors to organize and recount the construction of the corpus by an array of authors, editors, publishers, and bibliographers, to sort out some of its strata, and to trace the origins and modifications of some of its texts. This exercise will be useful not only for further investigations of Basil Valentine and other pseudonymous chymical corpora, but also for broader studies of forgery and book history.
The University of Jena was an important locus for chymistry teaching in Germany throughout the seventeenth century. Zacharias Brendel the Elder and the Younger, Werner Rolfinck, and Georg Wolfgang ...Wedel were four of the Jena professors who offered courses of chymistry during this time. These four held notably divergent views on the purpose, character, and legitimate content of chymistry, as well as of its proper place within the university. The distinctions among them prove especially clear in their widely differing assessments of metallic transmutation and of other longstanding chymical traditions and pursuits. Significantly, their sequential views do not form any linear progression over time. Instead, they illustrate the continuing disagreements and negotiations about chymistry, its role, and its identity as a discipline. The situation at Jena enriches our understanding of chymistry's seventeenth-century "didactic tradition" and documents the internal diversity of the subject and of its professors and practitioners.
Alchemy Restored Principe, Lawrence M.
Isis,
06/2011, Letnik:
102, Številka:
2
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Alchemy now holds an important place in the history of science. Its current status contrasts with its former exile as a “pseudoscience” or worse and results from several rehabilitative steps carried ...out by scholars who made closer, less programmatic, and more innovative studies of the documentary sources. Interestingly, alchemy's outcast status was created in the eighteenth century and perpetuated thereafter in part for strategic and polemical reasons—and not only on account of a lack of historical understanding. Alchemy's return to the fold of the history of science highlights important features about the development of science and our changing understanding of it.
The Bologna Stone, a mineral that became luminescent after chymical treatment, represents one of several "chymical exotica" eagerly sought by natural philosophers of the seventeenth century. ...Curiously, by mid-century the way to make it luminescent was considered a "lost secret" even though several methods had been repeatedly published. This disconnect between published recipes and experimental failures was explained in part by the investigations of Wilhelm Homberg (1653-1715), later the leading chymist of the Académie Royale des Sciences, and in part by the present author's modern reproduction of Homberg's process. This paper describes both endeavours, and explores the often-overlooked difficulties presented by even "trivial" materials involved in experimentation, and how practical reproduction of historical processes (including visits to important locales) can provide a deeper and more vivid understanding of texts as part of our project to better understand the past. It concludes by reflecting on the importance of maintaining a balance between the material and the intellectual when writing the history of chemistry.
The Aspiring Adeptpresents a provocative new view of Robert Boyle (1627-1691), one of the leading figures of the Scientific Revolution, by revealing for the first time his avid and lifelong pursuit ...of alchemy. Boyle has traditionally been considered, along with Newton, a founder of modern science because of his mechanical philosophy and his experimentation with the air-pump and other early scientific apparatus. However, Lawrence Principe shows that his alchemical quest--hidden first by Boyle's own codes and secrecy, and later suppressed or ignored--positions him more accurately in the intellectual and cultural crossroads of the seventeenth century.
Principe radically reinterprets Boyle's most famous work,The Sceptical Chymist, to show that it criticizes not alchemists, as has been thought, but "unphilosophical" pharmacists and textbook writers. He then shows Boyle's unambiguous enthusiasm for alchemy in his "lost"Dialogue on the Transmutation and Melioration of Metals, now reconstructed from scattered fragments and presented here in full for the first time. Intriguingly, Boyle believed that the goal of his quest, the Philosopher's Stone, could not only transmute base metals into gold, but could also attract angels. Alchemy could thus act both as a source of knowledge and as a defense against the growing tide of atheism that tormented him. In seeking to integrate the seemingly contradictory facets of Boyle's work, Principe also illuminates how alchemy and other "unscientific" pursuits had a far greater impact on early modern science than has previously been thought.
Abstract Background Pancreatic ductal adenocarcinoma (PDAC), which continues to have a dismal prognosis, is associated with a pronounced fibroinflammatory response. Inflammation in vivo can be ...mediated by 5-lipoxygenase (5LO), an enzyme that converts omega-6 fatty acids (FA) to eicosanoids, including leukotriene B4 (LTB4). We have previously shown that diets rich in omega-6 FA increase pancreatic lesions and mast cell infiltration in EL-Kras mice. In this study, we evaluated the role of 5LO in generating higher levels of LTB4 from human cells and in mediating lesion development and mast cell infiltration in EL-Kras mice. Materials and methods Human pancreatic ductal epithelial and cancer cells were treated with omega-6 FA in vitro . EL-Kras mice lacking 5LO (EL-Kras/5LO −/− ) mice were generated and fed standard chow or omega-6 FA diets. Pancreatic lesion frequency and mast cell infiltration were compared with EL-Kras/5LO +/+ mice. Human PDAC tumors were evaluated for 5LO expression and mast cells. Results Human pancreatic ductal epithelial and pancreatic cancer cells treated with omega-6 FA generated increased LTB4 levels in vitro . EL-Kras/5LO −/− mice developed fewer pancreatic lesions and had decreased mast cell infiltration when compared with EL-Kras/5LO +/+ mice. Human PDAC tumors with increased 5LO expression demonstrate increased mast cell infiltration. Additionally, diets rich in omega-6 FA failed to increase pancreatic lesion development and mast cell infiltration in EL-Kras/5LO −/− mice. Conclusions The expansion of mutant Kras-induced lesions via omega-6 FA is dependent on 5LO, and 5LO functions downstream of mutant Kras to mediate inflammation, suggesting that 5LO may be a potential chemopreventive and therapeutic target in pancreatic cancer.
The End of Alchemy? Principe, Lawrence M.
Osiris (Bruges),
01/2014, Letnik:
29, Številka:
1
Journal Article
Recenzirano
The general abandonment of serious endeavor toward metallic transmutation represents a major development in the history of chemistry, yet its exact causes and timing remain unclear. This essay ...examines the fate of chrysopoeia at the eighteenth-century Académie Royale des Sciences. It reveals a long-standing tension between Académie chemists, who pursued transmutation, and administrators, who tried to suppress it. This tension provides background for Etienne-François Geoffroy’s 1722 paper describing fraudulent practices around transmutation. Although transmutation seems to disappear after Geoffroy’s paper, manuscripts reveal that most of the institution’s chemists continued to pursue it privately until at least the 1760s, long after widely accepted dates for the “demise of alchemy” in learned circles.
A significant cache of hitherto unidentified manuscripts of Sir Kenelm Digby (1603-1665) has been discovered in the Bibliothèque Nationale et Universitaire de Strasbourg. These manuscripts comprise ...over 5000 pages of material. The documents relate almost entirely to metallic transmutation. About half of the material consists of alchemical treatises (most of them unpublished) by earlier authors - many relate to the transmuter Noël Picard, known as Dubois, executed in 1637 - and show Digby's careful comparison of variant readings in order to obtain the best text. The other half contains transcripts from the otherwise lost notebooks of Joseph Du Chesne, Samuel Cottereau Duclos (including several letters from Johann Rudolf Glauber), and others, as well as reports of experiments and processes carried out by a range of informants and by Digby himself. Significantly, these manuscripts bear witness to an important alchemical circle - of which Digby was a part - active in Paris during the 1650s and 1660s. The members of this circle traded manuscripts and information, and collaborated on a variety of alchemical projects; several members were also involved in other, better-known, scientific groupings of mid-century Paris.
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