Question by Ashe: alchemists?
i’m not exactly sure where to put this question but maybe i’ll get some good results… here goes: i was wondering all about alchemists. i don’t know much about them except whn i played the Nancy Drew game Curse of Blackmoor manor it played a large amount on alchemists so i was wondering if anyone could tell me about them. like, everything from A to Z… thank you!
Best answer:
Answer by howlingengines
Alchemists were , up to about the 18th century,what scientists are now. Isaac Newton was one , as were Copernicus and Keppler.The basic idea was the production of the Philospher’s stone , which would give the alchemist infinite power.There was an Italian , in about 1920 , called Fulcanelli who claimed to have done this, but he disappeared.
There is much history here , not only European but also Arabic and Chinese alchemy.I could go on for about 1000 pages , but I’ll leave that to you!
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An Alchemist is actually an old word for chemist. In ancient times, they were potions maker, thought to possess supernatural powers because of the things they could mix up and what these concoctions could do. Want to be an Alchemist? Become a chemist and make things that blow up, heal the sick, or simply make people die for no apparent reason.
Hi Madeleine (I hope I got the spelling right, can’t see your name now in this window).
As a biochemist, history buff, and Role-Playing Gamer of Medieval games, I think I can tell you what an alchemist is.
Alchemists are not really wizards, they don’t have traditional spells. They may certainly have scrolls that they read from that help them in their work. They were real people in the middle-ages. The most famous example of their attempted work was to turn Lead into Gold. It didn’t work, obviously. Interestingly, some elements DO change into others, through the process of radioactive decay. For example Uranium-231 will turn into Lead in say…2.3 million years. Unfortunately, Lead will not decay into Gold anytime sooner than our own Sun will eventually swallow us up 5 billion years from now.
So basically, alchemists were medieval chemists that experimented on all kinds of things, you know, like Neut’s leg mixed with quartz, boil for 30 min, flavor with bee pollen. Serve and enjoy—maybe they were trying to make a potion to turn the prince into a frog or something. Of course they were highly eccentric and the vast majority of experiments failed, but hey, they were cool! Remember this kind of magical stuff was really going on in real life 800 years ago in Europe, and most likely China (dunno about India).
So, an alchemist is really a business gambler—I don’t see much of a distinction between an alchemist and a pharmaceutical company trying to design a drug—their “modern” methods are much more hit-and-miss than you may think!
Richard