gems, early science, early chemistry, alchemy, early medicine

In the mid-20th century, Ingemar Düring defined Aristotle’s fourth Meteorological book as a treatise on chemistry—the first such treatise. Alchemy, for its part, has often been interpreted in a positivist light as a fanciful dawn, a religious-empirical auroral beginning—with at times unforeseen repercussions—of the development of the last of the sciences to flourish fully in the light of Reason: chemistry itself. A rather similar view animated, in the early 18th century, one of the compilatory works of Jean-Jacques Manget, physician, scholar, prolific compiler and editor: in the prologue to his edition of a collection of alchemical texts, he denounces the unattainability of the vain hopes of transmutation harbored by the alchemists, but does not deny that many useful artificial preparations—especially pharmaceutical ones—“emerged almost spontaneously among their other operations”; indeed, even Vincent of Beauvais may be seen in this light: defining alchemy as a purely ars mechanica, he noted in its practices aliquid vanitatis et mendacii (something of vanity and falsehood) concerning transmutation (which must be carefully scrutinized), but also a non parva utilitas (not insignificant usefulness) to be exploited, particularly in the service of craftsmanship and pharmacological arts.