It was in order to elucidate problems of this sort, as well as to determine what elements of truth, if any, there are in the theories of the alchemists, that The Alchemical Society was founded in 1912, mainly through my own efforts and those of my confreres, and for the first time something like justice was being done to the memory of the alchemists when the Society's activities were stayed by that greatest calamity of history, the European War.英文原著 · 《Bygone Beliefs》
Lead, on the other hand, the alchemists regarded as a very immature and impure metal: heavy and dull, corroded by sulphur and nitric acid, and converted into a calx by the action of fire,--lead, to the alchemists, was a symbol of man in a sinful and unregenerate condition.英文原著 · 《Bygone Beliefs》
Ben Jonson, in his "Alchemist," acted in 1610, also indicates the current popularity of this tale, when Face, the housekeeper, brings Dapper, the lawyer's clerk, to Subtle, and recommends him with--英文原著 · 《A Bundle of Ballads》
Nitro-Muriatic Acid.--Aqua Regia is a compound menstruum invented by the alchemists for dissolving gold. It is composed of colorless nitric acid (aqua-fortis) and ordinary muriatic acid; the mixture is yellow, and acquires the power of dissolving gold and platinum. These materials are not properly oxidized; it nearly causes their combination with chlorine, which is in the Muriatic acid.英文原著 · 《American Hand Book of the Daguerreotype》
Let us, in these excursions in the byways of thought, consider for a while the form that the quest of fundamental unity took in the hands of those curious mediaeval philosophers, half mystics, half experimentalists in natural things-- that are known by the name of "alchemists."英文原著 · 《Bygone Beliefs》
In the first place, however, I propose to say a few words more in description of the theological and philosophical doctrines which so greatly influenced the alchemists, and which, I believe, they borrowed for their attempted explanations of chemical and physical phenomena. This system of doctrine I have termed "mysticism"--a word which is unfortunately equivocal, and has been used to denote various systems of religious and philosophical thought, from the noblest to the most degraded. I have, therefore, further to define my usage of the term.英文原著 · 《Bygone Beliefs》