التراث التقاني الصيني .. الاسكندريه والسيمياء

Chinese Technical Heritage .. Alexandria and Alchemy

Chinese Technical Heritage

Medicine is the inspiration for the development of chemistry, and China has a legendary stock of medicines. Some of the herbal or mineral remedies adopted by European medicine include iron (for anemia), castor oil, kaolin (clay used to treat diarrhea), aconite (tuber used as a painkiller), camphor and hemp (cannabis tree), and Chu Lumugra oil used for leprosy. The active ingredient of rualfia, which was used in China as an emetic for purification, has been extracted and is currently used to treat high blood pressure and some mental conditions.

The Bronze Age did not reach China until about 1500 BC, and iron did not appear until about 500 BC, but by the beginning of their Alchemy Age around 100 AD, the Chinese were familiar with zinc, brass (an alloy of copper and zinc), mercury, sulfur and many well-known salts such as nitre. In the fifth century BC, a priest made a list of known substances that included lead oxide, lead carbonate, sulfur, calcium carbonate, hydrated calcium sulfate, ferric oxide, niter, talc or soapstone, hydrated magnesium silicate, potassium alum (a double salt of potassium and aluminum sulfate), malachite (basic copper carbonate, lapis lazuli, etc.). The Chinese were familiar with the volatile corrosive agent mercuric chloride and calomel (mercurous chloride) and could distinguish between them. They used mercury to extract gold and silver by amalgamation, and toward the end of the Alexandrian period they used tin amalgam with silver for dental treatment. This material repertoire in China, combined with the philosophical traditions we will examine later, provided fertile ground for the development of alchemy.