The Mystery and Romance of Alchemy and Pharmacy

About this book

The alchemist tends a furnace while the apothecary weighs strange ingredients. C. J. S. Thompson follows the long relationship between their arts, where medicine, experiment and extravagant hope often shared a workbench.

The book explores old remedies, chemical discoveries and the legends attached to elusive substances. Thompson's historical anecdotes make room for curious practitioners and extraordinary theories. Its appeal comes from a world before pharmacy and chemistry had their modern boundaries, when the desire to cure a body could lead directly into the search for the philosopher's stone.