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The elegantly simple illustration of an alchemist tending his furnace, with distillation apparatus in the background, depicted in Figure 66 is found in the first edition of the Margarita Philosophica, published in 1503.1,2 It is "the first modern encyclopedia of any importance"3 and was printed less than fifty years after Johannes Gutenberg printed his first books in 1455. The Margarita Philosophica reflects the university curriculum at the end of the fifteenth century. It covers grammar, logic, rhetoric, mathematical topics, astronomy, music, childbirth, astrology, and hell.4 Books 8 and 9 cover chemical topics, including transmuta-tion.3 The author, Gregorius Reisch, was the Prior of a Carthusian monastery at Freiburg and confessor of Maximilian I,4 Holy Roman Emperor (1493-1519), who established the dominance in Europe of the Habsburg Family.5 Figures such as 59, 60, 65, and 66 are elegant in their simplicity, and three more figures (Figures 67-69) are from the incunabula (pre-1501) and immediate post-incunabula periods.6

FIGURE 66. ■ An early-sixteenth-century alchemist from "the first modern encyclopedia of any importance" (Reisch, Margarita Philosophica, 1503, from The Roy G. Neville Historical Chemical Library, a collection in the Othmer Library, CHF).

FIGURE 67. ■ Woodcut from Bartholomaeus de Glanvilla, Anglicus. De las Propriedades de las Cosas, Toulouse, Henri Mayer, 1494.6 This is a printed edition of a very famous encyclopedia of the Middle Ages. It depicts a visit by a physician and a consult with an apothecary.

FIGURE 68. ■ Woodcut from Hieronymus Brunschwig, Buch der Vergift des Pestilenz, Strassburg, Johann (Reinhard) Grüninger, 1500.6 This book by the Strassburg surgeon Hieronymus Brunschwig concerns the plague. The woodcut depicts an apothecary preparing a draught.

FIGURE 69. ■ Woodcut from Hortus Sanitatis, Le Jardin de Santé, Paris, Philippe le Noir, ca 1510.6 It depicts a doctor in his laboratory.

FIGURE 69. ■ Woodcut from Hortus Sanitatis, Le Jardin de Santé, Paris, Philippe le Noir, ca 1510.6 It depicts a doctor in his laboratory.

1. G. Reisch, Margarita Philosophica (totius philosophiae rationalis, naturalis et moralis principia dialogice duodecim Ubris complectens), Joannem Schott, Freiburg, 1503. The author is grateful to The Roy G. Neville Historical Chemical Library (California) for supplying a copy of the woodcut in Figure 16 and to Dr. Neville for helpful discussions.

2. J.R. Partington, A History of Chemistry, MacMillan & Co., Ltd., London, 1962, Vol. 2, p. 94.

3. D.I. Duveen, Bibliotheca Alchemica et Chemica, facsimile reprint, HES Publishers, Utrecht, 1986, p. 501.

4. Neville, Roy G., The Roy G. Neville Historical Chemical Library: The Annotated Catalogue of

Printed Books on Alchemy, Chemistry, Chemical Technology, and Related Subjects, Chemical Heritage Foundation, Philadelphia, 2006. I am grateful to Dr. Neville for helpful discussions.

5. The New Encyclopedia Britannica, Encyclopedia Britannica, Inc., Chicago, 1986, Vol. 7, p. 965.

6. Maggs Brothers, No. 520, Manuscripts and Books on Medicine, Alchemy, Astrology & Natural Sciences, London, 1929. See the following pages for: Figure 67 (pp. 43-44); Figure 68 (pp. 70-71); Figure 69 (pp. 86-87).

TODAY'S SPECIALS: OIL OFSCORPION AND LADY'S SPOT FADE-IN CREAM

Figure 70 is the frontispiece from the 1608 book De Distillatione depicting the author Giambattista Delia Porta (1545-1615),1 a polymath who authored books on plants, physiognomy, physics, chemistry, and mathematics, wrote "some of the best Italian comedies of his age," and published a design for a steam engine.1,2 "This book is as rare as it is beautiful."3 The dedications in the preface are set in Hebrew, Persian, Chaldaic, Illyrian, and Armenian typescripts attributed to the Vatican type foundry.4

FIGURE 70. ■ Frontispiece depicting the polymath Giambattista Della Porta in his beautiful book De Distillatione Lib. IX (Rome, 1608).

Porta's book Magia Naturalis, first published in 1558, a compendium of popular science, was reprinted for over 100 years. A mixture of technical information and misinformation, it cites the procedure of the Greek physician and pharmacist Pedanius Dioscorides1 (ca. 40-ca. 90 A.D.) for heating "antimony" [really stibnite—see Saturn and the wolf in Figure 38(a)] into lead despite the fact that sixteenth-century practitioners knew they were different and could not be so in-terconverted.5 Magia Naturalis includes a preparation of a cosmetic that will produce spots (a kind of fade-in cream for women)—a bit of Renaissance fraternity house humor perhaps.

De Distillationibus also exemplifies the playful wit of the Renaissance, likening chemical glassware to animals. Figure 71(a) depicts a matrass6,7: it has a round bottom and long neck like an ostrich (phials for rectifying alcohol had a similar appearance) and is part of a distillation apparatus called an alembic, which has a distilling head that could be attached to a receiver (see Figures 72 and 73). The liquid to be distilled must be fairly volatile to make it to the top of the long neck. Figure 71(b) is a flat, stylized retort called a tortoise along with a rather stylized tortoise with a doglike head.

Could the hexagons with circles inside them on the tortoise's shell be a leap of about 330 "years into the future to our modern structure for benzene? We suspect not since benzene would not be discovered for another 200 years. However, when we discover that Kekule claimed in the 1860s to have dreamed of benzene's structure formed from three snakes biting tails in a circle, perhaps a subliminal message from another reptile 260 years earlier might not seem quite so strange.

The distillation apparatus in Figure 72(a) places the alembic head on top of a wide-mouth flask (a kind of cucurbit, a more squat version of a matrass). This apparatus would be more useful for a less volatile liquid. Figure 72(b) is a one-piece pelican. Note how the bird's neck forms a curved arm as it bites its chest. When

FIGURE 71. ■ Depictions of glassware and metaphors from Porta's De Distillatione (Figure 70): (a) Matrass and ostrich; (b) Flat retortlike "tortoise" and tortoise (somewhat "dog-headed" methinks; is that benzene on the shell?).

FIGURE 72. ■ Depictions of glassware and metaphors from Porta's De Distillatione (Figure 70): (a) Distillation apparatus employing a distillation head (alembic) atop a wide-mouth flask (or cucurbit) along with matching bear; (b) one-piece pelican for refluxing a liquid and the pelican itself biting its chest—considered a blood of Christ symbol; (c) A double pelican for prolonged exchange of hot fluids and an interesting metaphor.

FIGURE 72. ■ Depictions of glassware and metaphors from Porta's De Distillatione (Figure 70): (a) Distillation apparatus employing a distillation head (alembic) atop a wide-mouth flask (or cucurbit) along with matching bear; (b) one-piece pelican for refluxing a liquid and the pelican itself biting its chest—considered a blood of Christ symbol; (c) A double pelican for prolonged exchange of hot fluids and an interesting metaphor.

FIGURE 73. ■ Depictions of glassware and metaphors from Porta's De Distillatione (Figure 70): (a) Common retort and appropriate bird; (b) fractional distillation apparatus and depiction of a seven-headed beast (or perhaps the Organic Chemistry Laboratory Instructor).

FIGURE 73. ■ Depictions of glassware and metaphors from Porta's De Distillatione (Figure 70): (a) Common retort and appropriate bird; (b) fractional distillation apparatus and depiction of a seven-headed beast (or perhaps the Organic Chemistry Laboratory Instructor).

closed at the top, the pelican was used for prolonged heating at the boiling point of the recirculating (refluxing) solvent. Figure 72(c) shows a double pelican in which the two wedded vessels exchange vapors and fluids for a prolonged period. We hesitate to provide further interpretation of the metaphor except to remind the reader that the book was printed in Rome seemingly with some degree of church assent.4 Figure 73(a) shows a common retort. Figure 73(b) depicts a still capable of fractional distillation. The upper receivers are enriched in the more-volatile substances and the lower vessels are enriched in the less-volatile substances. Since fractional distillation is one of the first experiments in an introductory organic chemistry course, perhaps the seven-headed monster is a college sophomore's preconception of his or her laboratory instructor. Then again, perhaps not.

1. Also called Giambattista della Porta as well as Giovanni Battista Delia Porta (see Encyclopedia Brittanica, 15th ed., 1986, Chicago, Vol. 9, p. 624, which lists his birthdate as "1535?").

2. J. Ferguson, Bibliotheca Chemica, Derek Verschboyle, London, 1954, Vol. II, p. 216.

3. D.I. Duveen, Bibliotheca Alchemica et Chemica, HES, Utrecht, 1986, p. 481.

4. I. MacPhail, Alchemy and The Occult, Yale University Library, New Haven, CT, 1968, Vol. 1, pp. 212-215.

5. J.M. Stillman, The Story of Alchemy and Early Chemistry, Dover, New York, 1960, pp. 349-352.

6. J. Ekiund, The Incompleat Chemist—Being An Essay on the Eighteenth-Century Chemist in the Laboratory With a Dictionary Of Obsolete Chemical Terms of the Period, Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C., 1975.

7. F. Ferchl and A. Sussenguth, A Pictorial History of Chemistry, William Heinemann, London, 1939, pp. 73-75, 105-108.

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