Alchemy: ancient and modern : being a brief account of the alchemistic doctrines, and their relations, to mysticism on the one hand, and to recent discoveries in physical science on the other hand ; together with some particulars regarding the lives and teachings of the most noted alchemists / by H. Stanley Redgrove.
- Redgrove, H. Stanley (Herbert Stanley), 1887-1943.
- Date:
- 1911
Licence: Public Domain Mark
Credit: Alchemy: ancient and modern : being a brief account of the alchemistic doctrines, and their relations, to mysticism on the one hand, and to recent discoveries in physical science on the other hand ; together with some particulars regarding the lives and teachings of the most noted alchemists / by H. Stanley Redgrove. Source: Wellcome Collection.
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![copper into lithium and sodium, and emanation into argon. They also observed that apparently carbon- dioxide is continually evolved from an acid solution of thorium nitrate (see below, § ioo). It is worth while noticing that helium, neon and argon occur in the same column in the Periodic Table with emanation; lithium and sodium with copper, and carbon with thorium ; in each case the elements produced being of lighter atomic weight than those decomposed.21 The authors make the following suggestions: “(i) That helium and the a-particle are not identical; (2) that helium results from the ‘ degradation ’ of the large molecule of emanation by its bombardment with a-particles; (3) that this ‘degradation,’ when the emanation is alone or mixed with oxygen and hydrogen, results in the lowest member of the inactive series, namely, helium ; (4) that if particles of greater mass than hydrogen or oxygen are associated with the emanation, namely, liquid water, then the ‘ degrada¬ tion ’ of the emanation is less complete, and neon is produced ; (5) that when molecules of still greater weight and complexity are present, as is the case when the emanation is dissolved in a solution of copper sulphate, the product of ‘ degradation ’ of the emanation is argon. We are inclined to believe too [they say] that (6) the copper also is involved in this process of degradation, and is reduced to the lowest term of its series, namely, lithium ; and at the same time, inasmuch as the weight of the residue of alkali, produced when copper nitrate is present, is double that obtained from the blank experiment, or from water alone, the supposition is not excluded that the See pp. 106, 107. 21](https://iiif.wellcomecollection.org/image/b31365917_0187.jp2/full/800%2C/0/default.jpg)
