Page:Edward Thorpe — History of Chemistry, Volume I (1909).pdf/48

32 metals could be changed one into the other. To effect this purification it was necessary to add various preparations known as “medicines,” chief among which was the Great Elixir, or Magisterium, or the Philosopher’s Stone, by which the final transformation into the noblest of the metals could alone be achieved.

The Arabic words kímyâ and iksír were originally synonymous and each was used to denote the agent by which the baser metals could be transmuted into silver and gold. Ultimately the former term became restricted to indicate the art of transmutation (alchemy), whereas iksír, or al-iksír, continued to denote the medium by which the transmutation was effected. By later writers the term was used to indicate a liquid preparation—the quintessence of the philosophers—whence we have the word elixir, which always means a liquid.

The alchemistic theory of the compound nature and mutual relations of the metals is usually ascribed to Geber; but, although he adopted it, he distinctly states that it did not originate with him, but that he found it in the writings of his predecessors.

The idea of the stone, the philosophical powder, the grand magisterium, the elixir, the tincture, the quintessence—by all of which terms the transmuting medium is known in the literature of alchemy—is probably connected with