By William R. Newman
Reputed to have played impressive feats in New England--restoring the hair and the teeth to an elderly woman, bringing a withered peach tree to fruit--Eirenaeus Philalethes was once additionally rumored to be an adept possessor of the alchemical philosophers' stone. That the fellow was once basically a legendary construction did not shrink his attractiveness a whit--his writings have been spectacularly profitable, learn via Leibniz, esteemed via Newton and Boyle, voraciously fed on by means of numerous readers. Gehennical Fire is the tale of the guy in the back of the parable, George Starkey.
Though almost unknown this present day and little famous in historical past, Starkey was once America's most generally learn and celebrated scientist earlier than Benjamin Franklin. Born in Bermuda, he obtained his A.B. from Harvard in 1646 and 4 years later emigrated to London, the place he fast received prominence as a "chymist." thank you largely to the scholarly detective paintings of William Newman, we now be aware of that this can be just a small a part of a rare tale, that during truth George Starkey led lives. no longer content material just to submit his alchemical works below the identify Eirenaeus Philalethes, "A peaceable Lover of Truth," Starkey unfold problematic stories approximately his adjust ego, in influence giving him a lifetime of his own.
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Extra info for Gehennical Fire: The Lives of George Starkey, an American Alchemist in the Scientific Revolution
Sample text
But in fact, Starkey’s dreams betray a definite Helmontian structure, as revealed in the far more dramatic case found in a letter written by Starkey to Boyle on January 26, 1651/2. Here Starkey describes how, late one night, he had exhausted himself in his search for the alchahest and fell asleep with his head on his arm: Behold! I seemed intent on my work, and a man appeared, entering the laboratory, at whose arrival I was stupefied. ” When I heard this, realizing that he had mentioned God, 1 asked who he was, and he responded that he was my Eugenius; I asked whether there were such creatures.
Child was not only a skilled metallurgist but a convinced believer in the philosophers’ stone. In 1641 he sent Winthrop a “Catalogue of [his] Chymicall bookes,” containing over one hundred titles. The bulk of these are works on transmutation, by such authors as Geber, Roger Bacon, Flamel, and Sendivogius. Thus we find Child informing Winthrop of the following news in 1648: “Its reported by diverse, that the Emperour of Germany hath found a secret to turne C into O by the which he pays his Army.
An intimate frend to Mr. Leder in whose company hee should have come over. ” Starkey was now in a position to reap the fruits of his advance publicity. A mere youth, he was reputed to possess the secret of Van Helmont’s marvelous alchahest, the universal dissolvent. The speed with which Starkey set about his business in London is in fact remarkable. T h is may be an exaggeration, but it is sure that Child had introduced Starkey to Boyle by January 1650/1 and that Starkey was immediately administering medications to him and was entrusted with cases that had resisted treatment by orthodox medicine.