Copy 1

On superstitions connected with the history and practice of medicine and surgery / By Thomas Joseph Pettigrew.

  • Pettigrew, Thomas Joseph, 1791-1865.
Date:
1844
Catalogue details

Licence: Public Domain Mark

Credit: On superstitions connected with the history and practice of medicine and surgery / By Thomas Joseph Pettigrew. Source: Wellcome Collection.

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    Arabians after the establishment of the caliphs, and that its application was then first directed to the purposes of medicine. Geber, who lived in the seventh century, he observes, makes no allusion to the transmutation of metals; and he hence concludes that the practice dates its origin posterior to his time. It must, however, be remarked that Geber expressly mentions the philosopher’s stone, and professes to give the mode of preparing it, and I know not how to separate this art from that of converting or altering the nature of different substances. Dr. Thomson regards Geber’s work as the earliest chemical treatise in existence; and he describes it as written with so much plainness that we can understand the nature of the substances which he employed, the processes which he followed, and the greater number of the products he obtained. The chemical facts observable in his work he thinks entitle him to the appellation of ‘The father and founder of chemistry.” Yet Dr. Johnson regarded his language as so proverbially obscure, that he presumed the word gibberish or geberish to have arisen from the style of his writings. The language of the alchymists was enig- matical and obscure, their science and all its processes were mysterious, and directed to be conducted with great privacy. The metals were personified—gold was the only pure and healthy man, the others were as “lepers” or dis- eased ones. Alchymy cannot be regarded as of Arabian origin, how- ever much it may have been cultivated and extended in that country. It flourished at a very early period in Egypt, and the late discoveries in that “land of marvels” have shown an extended acquaintance with various arts and sciences as exercised in the different manufactures, of which representations are to be found in the tombs and excavations of a very early date. Without some know-