ALCHEMIST

Ancient Greek colour terminology captures brightness, light, and brilliance rather than clear-cut portions of the chromatic spectrum, as scholars agree today. This also applies to the rich semantic of yellow, which we investigate starting from a philosophical and theoretical perspective. We then shift our focus to Graeco-Roman technical writings dealing with alchemical dyes, cosmetics, and other crafts that made use of the same set of ingredients and colouring substances. We compile a complete list of yellow-dyeing plants used in antiquity, which will update and enlarge the lists currently available in secondary literature on the topic, such as the seminal catalogue by Robert J...

On November 14th, 1770, the young chemist Antoine-Laurent Lavoisier (1743-1794) read his 'Sur la nature de l'eau' to the Académie des Sciences. Eventually published in the Académie's journal in 1773, the two-part memoire challenged a widely held view of earlier experimenters: the transmutability of matter. Specifically, experimenters such as Jean-Baptiste Van Helmont (1580-1644), Robert Boyle (1627-1691), and Ole Borsch (1626-1690) had noted that when distilled water was heated in a glass vessel, a small amount of earthy residue remained, seemingly demonstrating the transmutation of water into earth...

This article investigates the prolific colonial New England alchemist and physician Gershom Bulkeley (1635/36-1713) and his late seventeenth-century household laboratory. First, I provide an updated bibliography and biography of Bulkeley and then engage an assemblage of surviving commonplace and account books, inventories, a vade mecum , and several books discovered to have been previously owned by Bulkeley. In order to understand Bulkeley's laboratory, I coin the term "saltbox science," arguing that his work combined European textual knowledge and temporal and material adaptations within the colonial household and town...

The elements of the pnictogen group, known as the 15th (VA) family in the periodic table, including phosphorus (P), arsenic (As), antimony (Sb) and bismuth (Bi), have been widely used by alchemists to treat various diseases since ancient times and hold a pivotal position in the history of medicine, owing to their diverse pharmacological activities. Recently, with the development of modern nanotechnology, pnictogen group elements appear in a more innovative form, namely two-dimensional (2D) pnictogens ( i.e...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Machine learning (ML) is widely used to uncover structure-property relationships of materials due to its ability to quickly find potential data patterns and make accurate predictions. However, like alchemists, materials scientists are plagued by time-consuming and labor-intensive experiments to build high-accuracy ML models. Here, we propose an automatic modeling method based on meta-learning for materials property prediction named Auto-MatRegressor, which automates algorithm selection and hyperparameter optimization by learning from previous modeling experience, i...

C. F. Wenzel was a chemist and an alchemist. He had deep knowledge of acids, bases and salts, and he was credited with the first formulation of the Law of Mass Action. Yet he was also an alchemist, who on the eve of the Chemical Revolution published his beliefs in transmutation and in the division of metals into their constituents, for which he was rewarded with the gold medal of the Royal Danish Academy of the Sciences. His promoter, Professor C. G. Kratzenstein, was himself a believer in transmutation, even if he voiced some reservations...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Ancient and medieval alchemical works include several comparisons between the generation and development of metals and those of plants, animals, and living beings. These comparisons could refer to adopt physiological models in the explanation of the natural formation of metals and their artificial transformation, to justify the place occupied by alchemy within the broader study of the natural world, and to stand as metaphorical descriptions of specific alchemical procedures. This article analyses these features by focusing on the relationship between mercury and gold, the latter being the "perfect" metal that constituted both an ambitious goal of alchemical practice and one of its key ingredients...

My list of 66 medically related anniversaries for 2023 (events in years ending '23 and'73) includes:
● foundation of the Chelsea Physic Garden (1673);
● foundation of The Lancet by Thomas Wakley (October 1823);
● Roe v Wade (1973);
● Twenty five births include: Hans Berger, German neurologist; Aimé Bonpland, French physician and botanist; Alexis Carrel, French surgeon and Nobel prize winner; Lloyd Conover, American pharmaceutical chemist; Félix d'Herelle, French-Canadian microbiologist; Théodore de Mayerne, Swiss physician; Carl Djerassi, American pharmaceutical chemist and novelist; Sigismund Elsholtz, German physician, botanist, and alchemist; Daniel Gajdusek, American virologist; Beatrix Hamburg, American psychiatrist; Richard Mead, English physician; Arthur Jensen, American educational psychologist; Otto Loewi, German pharmacologist; Georg Balthasar Metzger, German physician and scientist; William P Murphy Jr, American physician and inventor of medical devices; William Petty, English physician and political economist; Arnold S Relman, American physician and editor; Caspar Schamberger, German surgeon; Giovanni Antonio Scopoli, Italian physician and scientist; Ludwik Teichmann, Polish physician and anatomist; Alfred Russell Wallace, English naturalist; and Thomas Young, English scientist and polymath;
● Thirteen deaths include: Francis Anthony, English apothecary, physician, and alchemist; Matthew Baillie, Scottish physician and pathologist; John Caius, English physician; Regnier De Graaf, Dutch physician, physiologist, and anatomist; Walter Rudolf Hess, Swiss physiologist; Edward Jenner, English physician; Dickinson W Richards, American physician; Wilhelm Röntgen, German physicist; Antony van Leeuwenhoek, Dutch microscopist; Justus von Liebig, German chemist; and Selman Waksman, Ukrainian-American biochemist;
● Eleven biomedical texts published, written by Avicenna, Persian physician, astronomer, and philosopher; Gaspard Bauhin, Swiss botanist; William Budd, English physician; Aleixeu de Abreu, Portuguese physician and tropical pathologist; John Lelamour, English schoolmaster; Lucretius, Roman poet and philosopher; Marcello Malpighi, Italian physician; Girolamo Mercuriale, Italian physician; Raymond Pearl, American biologist; Costanzo Varolio, Italian anatomist and physician; Charles White, English physician; and Wilhelm Wundt, German physiologist;
● compilation of the Lelamour Herbal by John Lelamour, English schoolmaster (1373);
● anatomical, biochemical, haematological, microbiological, and physiological observations by Gasparus Aselli, Italian physician; Gerhard Henrik Armauer Hansen, Norwegian physician; William Prout, English chemist, physician, and theologian; Gaston Ramon, French biologist; Hilaire-Marin Rouelle, French chemist; and Antony van Leeuwenhoek, Dutch microscopist;
● Foundation of the pharmaceutical companies Novo Nordisk in Denmark (1923) and Sanofi in France (1973);
● Nobel prizes awarded to Banting and Macleod (1923) and to von Frisch, Lorenz, and Tinbergen (1973)...

Infectious disease outbreaks are a primary contributor to coral reef decline worldwide. A particularly lethal disease, black band disease (BBD), was one of the first coral diseases reported and has since been documented on reefs worldwide. BBD is described as a microbial consortium of photosynthetic cyanobacteria, sulfate-reducing and sulfide-oxidizing bacteria, and heterotrophic bacteria and archaea. The disease is visually identified by a characteristic dark band that moves across apparently healthy coral tissue leaving behind bare skeleton...

Andreas Libavius (ca. 1560-1616) is a well-known early modern physician and alchemist, who involved himself in various disputes. For example, in several of his writings he rejected the heterodox texts related to the Rosicrucian episode. This paper analyses Libavius's refutation of the Rosicrucian manifestos (1614-16), and aims to show that, in his response, Libavius presented himself not just as a member of the scholarly community, which is a well known facet of his life and career, but also as a Lutheran who aimed to protect his confession from attacks by heterodox sects...

This short overview describes the historical development of the physics and chemistry of organic solvents and solutions from the alchemist era until the present time based on some carefully selected examples that can be considered landmarks in the history of solution chemistry.

As the primary ingredient in gunpowder, saltpeter was an extraordinarily important commodity in the early modern world. Historians of science and technology have long studied its military applications but have rarely focused on its uses outside of warfare. Due to its potential effectiveness as a fertilizer, saltpeter was also an integral component of experimental agricultural reform movements in the early modern period and particularly in seventeenth-century England. This became possible for several reasons: the creation of a thriving domestic saltpeter production industry in the second half of the sixteenth century; the development of vitalist alchemical theories that sought a unified explanation for the "growth" of minerals, metals, and plants; the rise of experimental natural philosophy; and the mid-seventeenth-century dominance of the English East India Company in the saltpeter trade, which allowed agricultural reformers to repurpose domestically produced saltpeter in agriculturally productive ways...

Stony coral tissue loss disease (SCTLD) was first observed in Florida in 2014 and has since spread to multiple coral reefs across the wider Caribbean. The northern section of Florida's Coral Reef has been heavily impacted by this outbreak, with some reefs experiencing as much as a 60% loss of living coral tissue area. We experimentally assessed the effectiveness of two intervention treatments on SCTLD-affected Montastraea cavernosa colonies in situ. Colonies were tagged and divided into three treatment groups: (1) chlorinated epoxy, (2) amoxicillin combined with CoreRx/Ocean Alchemists Base 2B, and (3) untreated controls...

Non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC) causes significant mortality each year. After successful resection of disease stage IB (>4 cm) to IIIA (per AJCC 7), adjuvant platinum-based chemotherapy improves median overall survival and is the standard of care, but many patients still experience recurrence of disease. An adjuvant regimen with greater efficacy could substantially improve outcomes. Pembrolizumab, a programmed cell death-1 inhibitor, has become an important option in the treatment of metastatic NSCLC...

No abstract text is available yet for this article.

Until now, the only known source on a curious incident in Robert Boyle's life was the account of his laboratory assistant Ambrose Godfrey regarding one anonymous "Crosey-Crucian." It survives only in excerpts and paraphrases published in 1858. Based on the recent identification of this adept as Peter Moritz, a German alchemist and religious dissenter, this paper presents his own perspective as expressed in an epistolary document originally addressed to Boyle. It emerges that the stock tale of alchemical fraud dominating Godfrey's account does not do justice to the episode's complexities...

Objectives: To identify and analyze various types of leadership and management that could contribute to the strengthening of health systems based on primary health care (PHC). Methods: A structured review of the literature on management and leadership applicable to PHC-based health systems was conducted. Of the 19 articles identified, relevant details were extracted using a standardized methodology. Results: PHC-based health systems should establish optimal management practices to achieve quality, efficiency, and effectiveness...

While recent historical studies have uncovered the intercontinental reputations of New England alchemists, much still remains to be known about actual attitudes concerning alchemy in the early colonies. Focusing on a corpus of roughly a dozen untranslated, and all but entirely unexamined Latin orations (ca. 200 pages) composed by Harvard College's presidents and students in the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century, I argue that these new sources reveal the ambivalent, occasionally antagonistic attitude that educated New England men held towards the art of alchemy...