Rampling: Reading alchemically

[Paul Ferguson]

"Dozens of early modern treatises claim to offer straightforward instructions on the theory and practice of alchemy, including all the steps necessary to produce the philosophers’ stone and a range of medicinal elixirs. Yet the resulting works often seem to obfuscate more than they explain: omitting vital information, disguising ingredients and practices behind cover names, and describing outcomes that seem, to modern eyes, impossible."

Full text

https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/...22F4553ACF