Page:Edward Thorpe — History of Chemistry, Volume I (1909).pdf/20

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was called by the same name, ἅμμον—Hammon. . . . Lastly, the learned Bochart, keeping to the same sense of the word, chooses to derive it from the Arabic chema, or kema—to hide; adding that there is an Arabic book of secrets called by the same name Kemi.

From the whole of which Boerhaave gathers that chemistry was thus originally denominated because it was considered of old as “not fit to be divulged to the populace, but treasured up as a religious secret.”

If we are to credit Zozimus the Panopolite, who is said to have lived about the beginning of the fifth century, there were sound reasons for thus treasuring up chemistry as a religious secret, since, as it sprang from the pretium amoris, its origin was not too reputable. “What the divine writings relate is that the angels, enflamed with the desire of women, instructed ’em in all the works and mysteries of nature. For which indiscretion they were excluded heaven, as having taught men things unfit for ’em to know.” And Scaliger asserts that “Hermes testifies as much; and all our learning, both open and occult, confirms the account.” But who Hermes was, adds that author, is hard to say, for none of his writings has survived to our age, “that lately published in Italy under the name of Hermes Trismegistus being a manifest forgery.”

This legend of the “feministic” origin of chemistry is in reality much older than the fifth