Literary Notices on the History of So-called Gold-making

...is Pliny’s Electrum, or a mixture of gold and silver, which the Abbot Gedoyn confused with amber The Greek and Latin word elektron/electrum refers both to the naturally occurring alloy of gold and silver and to fossilized resin (amber) in his translation of Pausanias.

Already 2,300 years ago, cinnabar from the mercury mines at Almaden in Spain was brought to Rome in the form of a sand *).

Abu Yusuf Al-Kindi Al-Kindi (c. 801–873 AD), known as "the Philosopher of the Arabs," was one of the first to argue against the possibility of the alchemical transformation of base metals into gold wrote a book in 890 AD refuting those who boast of the art of making gold and silver original Latin: quo refelluntur, qui auri et argenti conficiendi artem jactant. Casiri, Arabic-Spanish Library of the Escorial, Vol. I, p. 356.

Dhul-Nun al-Misri original: Zulnun Ibn Ibrahim, from Akhmim in Egypt, who was in no way inferior to Geber in chemical knowledge, wrote his own work on chemical experiments. Casiri, in the place cited, p. 441.

"Red Sulfur" original Arabic: Kebrat al ahhmad; Latin: Sulphur rubrum, say the Arabs, instead of alchemical gold; for example, Abu Bakr ibn Tufail original: Abi Dschafar Ibn Tofail in his famous philosophical epistle of Hayy ibn Yaqdhan, p. 14 of the second improved edition by Pocock, Oxford, 1700. 4to.

Now the Arabists Scholars in the 12th and 13th centuries who translated Arabic scientific and philosophical works into Latin pressed in. That wretched Assembly of the Philosophers original: Turba Philosophorum, one of the earliest and most influential Latin alchemical texts, framed as a debate between pre-Socratic philosophers was already compiled in the 12th century. It is cited by Alanus, Albertus Magnus, and others of the 13th century. Bernard of Treviso says that Parmenides set him on the right path within this Assembly. Mere vanity!

*) On the Mercury Mining at Almaden, by Johann Martin Hoppensack, Royal Spanish Director of Mines. With copperplate engravings. Weimar 1790. 8vo.