Free Kolchak The Night Strangler by Richard Matheson, Jeff Rice Page A

Avarice , all 432 pages of it, devoted largely to the efforts of these pseudo-adepts.
     

Chapter Ten
     
     
     
    I don’t pretend to understand half of what I read, but i became clear that much of the basis of modern chemistry stems directly from alchemy (the discovery of phosphorus being an example that comes readily to mind) and that the alchemists have been with us practically since the first of recorded history. From ancient Egypt eastward to China, and westward to equally ancient Greece, alchemists and their activities have been well and lovingly recorded. They were prominent in Europe throughout the last years of the twelfth century and well into the thirteenth. The University of Montpellier, founded in 1181, numbered among its pupils two saints—Thomas Aquinas and Albertus Magnus—as well as Roger Bacon, Raymond Lully, Michel de Nostredeme (better known as Nostradamus), Erasmus and Rabelais. All of them practiced the hermetic art.
    The list of names is impressive. There were Jewish adepts like Mary of Alexandria in the fourth century (women’s libbers, please note); Jabir the Arab in the eighth century; and the tenth century is graced by the name of Pope Sylvester II, who was born Gerbert, and was a known French alchemist (Catholics, please note).
    The thirteenth century produced not only Roger Bacon, a recognized adept and a Franciscan monk, but several others as well.
    In the fourteenth century there was the famous Nicholas Flamel, a French adept and public “scrivener” (journalists, please note). And there was also Pope John XXII, who denounced what he practiced. Basil Valentine was active in the fifteenth century. He was a Benedictine monk. Bernard of Treviso was a contemporary of his.
    Alexander Seton, known as Alexander the Cosmopolite, was active in the sixteenth century.
    The seventeenth century produced Eirenaeus Philponos, who, despite his fancy-sounding name, was an Englishman, nonetheless. It has been written that he was also the Comte de St. Garmain, who, from what I read, really got around and was anywhere from 85 to 150 years old when he “died,” although witnesses to this death were not considered reliable.
    Adepts, alchemists, and puffers have been with us right up to the present and, interestingly enough, a certain Armand Barbault is reported to have spent more than 20 years conducting experiments with a scant four pounds of ordinary earth and early morning dew (gathered with bedsheets), along with the rising sap of young plants, to produce a compound or elixir that defied analysis in the most modern of German laboratories but was found to be good for heart ailments. This, in the early 1960’s!
    He could not be contacted for comment, but as far as is known he is still at work and his preparation has been impossible to either analyze or reproduce on a commercial basis, because 1. it takes much too long to prepare the materials, and synthetics do not produce the same results; and 2. his elixir apparently contains elements (which he is said to have claimed to produce himself) that are as yet undiscovered and unknown .
    As to the ingredients of the Elixir of Life, there seems to be much disagreement as to exactly what they are and in what combination they must be used to produce the life-prolonging substance. Some say the two “germinative” substances are gold (the “male” principle) and “philosopher’s mercury,” the “prime agent” (and “female” principle).
    Others claim the so-called prime matter consists of silver and gold, combined with mercury and using quicksilver as a unifying agent.
    Preparing this Elixir of Life is only the first step in making the Philosopher’s Stone, which is not a stone at all, but yet another preparation that may take an entire (albeit ordinary) lifetime. Some of the materials are arsenic pyrites, iron, lead, silver, mercury, and acids like citric acid. These elements are combined over months and years by pulverizing, heating and dissolving