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Lives of Alchemystical Philosophers Based on Materials Collected in 1815
Lives of Alchemystical Philosophers Based on Materials Collected in 1815 Author:Arthur Edward Waite Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: LIVES OF THE ALCHEMISTS. G E B E R. The first, and, according to the general concensus of Hermetic authorities, the prince of those alchemical adepts who h... more »ave appeared during the Christian era, was the famous Geber, Giaber, or Yeber, whose true name was Abou Moussah Djafar al Sofi, and who was a native of Haman, in Mesopotamia, according to the more probable opinion. He is also said to have been a Greek, a Spanish Arabian born at Seville, and a Persian of Thus. Romance represents him as an illuminated monarch of India. According to Aboulfeda, he flourished during the eighth century, but later and earlier periods have been also suggested. His life is involved in hopeless obscurity ; but his experiments upon metals, undertaken with a view to the discovery of their constituent elements and the degrees of their fusibility, led him to numerous discoveries both in chemistry and in medicine, including suroxydised muriate of mercury, red oxyde of mercury, and nitric acid. " It is thus that Hermetic philosophy gave rise to chemistry," says a writer in the Biographic Universelle, " and that the reputation of Geber is permanently established, not upon his search for an impossible chimera, but for his discovery of truths founded on actual experience." With the characteristic prodigality of the Middle Ages, no less than five hundred treatises have been attributed to the Arabian adept. They are supposed to have embracedthe whole circle of the physical sciences, including astronomy and medicine. A few fragments, comparatively, alone remain of all these colossal achievements. Cardan included their author among the twelve most penetrating minds of the whole world, and Boerhave spoke of him with consideration and respect in his celebrated Institutions Chemicce. According to M. Hoefer, he d...« less