Chemistry Reference
In-Depth Information
vived the alchemical figures with new industry when modern chemistry
emerged.
10
Just as the alchemist and to a lesser extent the astrologer had been the
main (pre)scientific figures in medieval literature, the 'al-chemist' and
some related figures, such as the 'physician' engaged in chemistry or
pharmacy, became the main scientific figures in the nineteenth-century
literature. I prefer using the term 'al-chemist' because either the figures
are really called alchemists or it is simply the medieval alchemist who
appears in the disguise of a chemist or physician, if, for instance, gold-
making is replaced with diamond-making or some drug fills the place of
the elixir of life. Nonetheless, writers, while borrowing their literary
equipment from medieval colleagues, were actually writing about con-
temporary science, as we soon see.
3.
Renewing the Discourse about the True Alchemy in Christian
Romanticism
Throughout the history of Latin alchemy there was debate on the true
alchemy. Apart from differences concerning the right experimental
approach and the correct theory of metals and transmutation, the dispute
was about whether alchemy goes beyond material improvement to in-
clude spiritual (
i.e.
intellectual, moral, and religious) improvement of the
adept and on how both aspects are to be combined. During the late eigh-
teenth century, when experimental and theoretical chemistry became an
increasing part of scientific research, that medieval debate was renewed
in a particularly romantic fashion and with quite extreme positions. An
early example is the German Romanticist Johann Heinrich Jung (1740-
10
As Barbara Benedict (2004) observes, the virtuoso and the medical doctor were sub-
ject to many satires in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. I disagree, however,
with her thesis that this period created the 'mad scientists', because satires on virtuosi
and, even more so, on medical doctors are much older. Instead, I argue in this chapter
that the 'mad scientist' was created in the early nineteenth century by transforming
the mad alchemist of the fourteenth century. In addition, in contrast to a widespread
view, alchemy seems to be rather unimportant in early British gothic novels. Among
the 208 gothic novels analyzed by Ann B. Tracy (1981), there are only three that in-
clude some alchemy, including only one (William Godwin's
St. Leon
, 1799, see be-
low) with an alchemist featuring as a main character, which some do not consider a
gothic novel.
