Gold and the transmutation of metals

TIFFIREAU. T
Paris 1889

PREFACE

Everything in external nature is reduced to a change of form in the aggregation of
eternally invariable chemical elements (Helmholtz).

By publishing the first volume of this collection of writings - ancient and modern - relating to the
hermetic sciences, we are not obeying the vulgar desire to act as a bibliophile, to edit
or republish books, strange in substance, bizarre in a form that is often difficult to
understand, where almost ridiculous fantasies are sometimes mixed with the boldest conceptions
of intuition.

We aim higher and further.

Today the human mind is quite clearly freed from all prejudices so as not to shy away from
any hypothesis: not allowing itself to be stopped by any superstition or any fear, it goes to the
extreme limits of logic, believing that any observation acquired, a new study can
add something beyond. Above all, he freed himself from the fear of words and does not condemn any
manifestation of cerebral effort, under whatever label it presents itself.

Alchemy, Hermeticism, Occultism, are for him only headings whose mysterious appearance
does not frighten him. Isis under her veil; can appear as a fantastic being, like a
disturbing specter. The scholar goes straight to her and pretends to see her face.

In the past, at the word alchemy, we shuddered or smiled. Superstition or skepticism which are
only one and the same form of ignorance and laziness.

We now understand that man has no right to deny or affirm a priori. To say that
alchemy is only a web of grotesque errors is as absurd as to believe, out of a surge of faith,
in unproven miracles. What, moreover, is a Hermetic philosopher? When, just yesterday, William Thomson, to establish his theory of swirling atoms, caused the smoke rings of ammonia hydrochloride
to emerge with a blow of a wand, struck on a stretched sheet , when Helmholtz analyzed the swirling movements in a liquid perfect, that is to say existing only in the state of mathematical hypothesis, like the point in geometry, when Mr. Dupré counts, in a cube of water having a side of a thousandth of a thousandth, invisible At. microscope, an enormous number of 225 million molecules, these scientists work the alchemists, and the ignorant who would see them act, without understanding the scope of their work,

Crazy! The word is quickly spoken! Mad, Democritus, the great laugher who dared to say that: the
varieties of all things depend on the varieties of their atoms, in number, dimension and
aggregation; Mad, Empedocles who affirmed adaptation; crazy, Epicurus who denied death, crazy,
Lucretius who professed the indestructibility of atoms, the imperishable materials of the universe!

Was Mr. Frémy not acting as an alchemist when, by reacting calcium fluoride with red on aluminum containing traces of dichromate of potash, he produced the polyhedral crystals of the ruby?

Only the working conditions have changed. The blowers of the Middle Ages, always in fear of
persecution, pale by the fear of the stake, hid like criminals, dreaming of the
enormous and quickly acquired power which would triumph over their executioners. On the world, your catholicity
weighed, with its sinister negation of science, with its contempt for bodily well-being, with its
heavy theory of sacrifice, with its atrocious ignorance of the needs and rights of humanity.
The scientist hid himself in his science, and if, obeying this innate passion in the heart of man which
pushes him to share his joys as a finder with his fellow men, he decided to speak, still a
final vestige of prudence would give him advised using a mysterious, arcane language and
yet, most often, for those who know how to decipher it, simple in its essence, like everything that is
logical and true.

Today, as Tyndall said, science no longer has the right to isolate itself, but it
freely combines all efforts aimed at improving the lot of man. The great fault of the
Hermeticists - a fault which cannot be attributed to them as a crime, because they were crushed under the iron yoke of ignorance and intransigent tyranny - is to have retreated from the generalization of
principles. They stopped, worried, at the threshold of your truth, without daring to cross it, lingering on searches that were sometimes childish like games. It was also that the Bible confined them, the fathers of the Church stifled them, and many respectable victims died from not being able to work
freely.

What must be considered in these philosophers is less the applications they make of their
theories than the first idea which dictated them to them. In the writings of each of them, there is, in the form, the substance, the basis, the substratum. When Bacon called sound a spiritual movement, perhaps
he was proclaiming one of the axioms of the future?

Do we not find all the elements of alchemical science in the experiments of Norman
Lockyer, proving through his spectroscopic studies that in the hottest stars, we
find only pure hydrogen, while in less hot ones, metals, then
metalloids appear, and that on earth, finally, hydrogen, metals and metalloids are never found
in a perfectly pure state, but in more or less complex combinations. What
then is this hydrogen, if not the Absolute of the alchemists, and what almost conclusive proof of the
possible reduction of the mature into its one principle. and primordial?

Today we can loudly profess this dogma of the unity of matter: by experimenting with
alcohol or oil, we acquire the irrefutable demonstration of the creation of the
solar system, by fragmentation of a single mass.

But is hydrogen the extreme starting point of what we incorrectly call simple bodies?

The phosphorescent spectra showed in the atom a complex chemical system whose
constituent elements can be dissociated. Huggins and Lecoq de Boisbaudran popularized this
truth that today only bad faith could cast doubt on it.

But the atom being a composite body, what is there beyond? what would its constituent elements be?
Would they be multiple or would they relate to a single element? To this question. Willam
Crookes boldly responds: — I venture to conclude that the elements of the so-called
simple bodies that we know are in reality compound molecules. I ask you so that
you have a design. of their genesis, to carry your mind back through the ages, towards the time
when the universe was empty and without form, and to follow the development of matter in the states
known to us from something antecedent. I propose to call protyle this which existed before
our elements, before matter as we know it now.

This idea of ​​raw material, of protyle, pre-exists in all reasoning minds. This is how
Descartes speaks of a universal fluid similar to the most subtle and penetrating liquor
in the world.

Mr. Berthelot, already fifteen years old, did not shy away from the hypothesis of the decomposition of
simple bodies; if the means at our disposal today, he said, still remain powerless, nothing
prevents us from supposing that a new discovery, similar to that of the Voltaic current,
in admitting the logical necessity of the unity of matter, the eminent chemist recognized the
likelihood of the transmutation of current elements into one another.

Research on thermochemistry, by introducing the idea of ​​dissociation into science, dealt
a decisive blow to outdated prejudices, notably the affinity hypothesis.

From dissociation to synthesis, the progression is logical, and the idea of ​​the transmutation of metals or rather of their constitution by the improvement of the protylic element imposes itself.

ME Varenne didn't he say, there is. three years: — Compress hydrogen up to two hundred
thousand atmospheres and you will have an ingot of pure gold.

From this analysis of matter to the analysis of life, the step will soon be taken.
To what height does modern science rise when, looking face to face at the great
organic problems, it says with Claude Bernard:

The phenomena in noise bodies and in living bodies have as conditions the same
elements and the same elementary properties . It’s the complexity of the arrangement that makes the
difference.

Descartes had already boldly asserted that life is only a more
complicated result of the laws of physics and mechanics.

Perhaps, and this is where Hermeticism and Occultism come in, it exiles
protylian substances, in some way so diluted that from being material they pass to another state
which, without an exact notion, we would call from now on spiritual, transformation of which the
formation of gases or the birth of electricity provide us with probable similarities.

Isn't the mind an essential, special state of matter, a hyperprotyle, endowed with
active faculties whose effects we feel, without it being yet possible for us to determine their nature
?

These problems have always preoccupied elite men and it would be unfair to deny that little by
little their research and discoveries have changed the axis of science.

Would anyone today dare to accuse Crookes or Gibier of madness, charlatanism or lies?

Who would dare to say that Kalic-King has not appeared?

It seems more than interesting to us, it seems useful to us to place once again before the eyes of
men of good faith these works, almost all of which cannot be found, which constitute the pieces of the great hermetic file, of this trial, judged by ignorance, but always subject to revision. We have
the conviction that, in poorly known and poorly studied pamphlets, such as
Roger Bacon's Mirror of Alchemy or the Elixir of Philosophers attributed to Pope John XXII, the true researcher will know how to free the diamond from its matrix. And how many other disdained works! In reality, when we understand the works of Swedenborg, of Hœnè Wronski, of LouisLucas, of Fabre d'Olivet,
new, immense horizons will open before your minds.

And let us not forget that our scholars, even if they are from the Institute, are the sons, too often ungrateful, of the Hermeticists. Perhaps, as the sages of Tibet would have it, they are the unconscious pupils of the scientists of some vanished Atlantis, their listeners still half-deaf with echoes, propagating from the ancient catastrophes of your cosmic machine.

The collection of writings relating to the hermetic sciences will, in a short time, be the vade mecum
of those who, beyond all prejudices, admit the possible, even before the probable.

JULES LERMINA.. May 1889.

---

PARACELS
AND ALCHEMY
IN THE 16TH
CENTURY BY M. FRANCK
MEMBER OF THE ACADEMY OF MORAL AND POLITICAL SCIENCES

Read at the annual public session of the five Academies, October 25, 1853
If the alchemy had never had for object other than this double dream of greed and weakness, the
secret of converting all metals into gold and that of prolonging human life at will in a
body free from pain and infirmity, I I would be careful not to evoke the memory of such a chimerical art
, and, if it were not, so dangerous. But at a certain moment she set herself a
higher and more serious goal. Driven by its very illusions to research, sometimes to the
discovery of truth, it prepared the regeneration of natural sciences, by pushing them, on the side
of facts, into the paths of experience and analysis, and by relating by their principles to the
highest speculations of metaphysics. As such, it will be able to excite some interest in a
time which is proof of its errors and which prides itself on justice towards past centuries.

The origin of alchemy, like that of most of our true or false knowledge, is lost
in a cloud. However, it is difficult to trace it back with some followers to
Mezaraïm, son of Ham and first king of Egypt, or to the supposed author of the Poemander this supposed
monument of the mysterious wisdom of the Egyptian priests. Taut Hermes Trismegistus. The
title of hermetic philosophy, name with that of Gham, the patriarch of Africa, will not seem to anyone a sufficient guarantee of this venerable antiquity. We will perhaps recognize a first attempt at general chemistry in some of the oldest philosophical systems of Greece; in the atoms of Leucippus
and Democritus, resurrected, with more modest attributions, by contemporary science;

in the four elements of Empedocles, which continue to designate, if not the principles, at least the
different states, of matter, sometimes solid like earth, sometimes fluid like air, liquid
like water, impalpable, it is that is to say imponderable, like fire; and finally in the more
scholarly theory of Anaxagoras' Homiomeries. But, it is far from there to make Democritus an alchemist,
disciple of the priests of Memphis, of the mage Ostanes and of a certain Mary, nicknamed the Jewess,
in whom, crossing a distance of ten to twelve centuries, we recognized the sister of Moses.

However, we do not have the works that the Abderitan philosopher composed on great art,
on sacred art, as he calls it. Probably yes ! But they deserve the same degree of confidence
as those of Taut himself, of the magician Ostanes, of the prophetess Mary, who are also in
our hands, with many others, signed with the names of Aristotle, of King Solomon and of Queen
Cleopatra.

What is certain is that faith in alchemy was already accredited at the beginning of our
era: for we read in Pliny's Natural History (1) that the Emperor Caligula succeeded in extracting a
little gold a large quantity of orpiment; but that, the result having deceived his greed, he renounced
this means of increasing his treasure. Another fact that we can assert with confidence is that
alchemical science originated in Egypt under the influence of that half- metaphysical, half-religious pantheism, which was formed in Alexandria during the first centuries of the Christian era
, through the encounter of Greek philosophy with the exalted beliefs and
ambitious dreams of the East. We notice, in fact, that after the fabulous characters or those clearly
prior to this order of ideas, the first names invoked by Hermetic philosophy are
Alexandrian names: Synesius, Heliodorus, Olympiodorus, Zosimas. Add this tradition reported
by Orosius (2) at the beginning of the 5th century, and collected by Suidas (3), that Diocletian, unable
to put an end to the increased insurrections of the Egyptians, ordered the destruction of all
their chemistry books, because that, according to him, was the secret of their wealth and their stubborn
resistance. Finally, it is to a philosopher from Alexandria, to a Christian philosopher, probably in the
manner of the bishop of Ptolemaides, the disciple of Hypathia, that the Arabs say they are indebted for
all their alchemical knowledge. This character, called Adfar, flourished during the first
half of the 7th century, in the ancient capital of the Ptolemies, with the reputation of possessing all the secrets of nature, and of having discovered the writings of Hermes on great art. He is
probably the author. His reputation extended as far as Rome, from where it attracted
another enthusiast, a young man named Morienus, who, admitted into the confidence of Adfar
and initiated into all his science, communicated it to the end of his life, to prince Ommiade Khalud, son of the caliph Yezid, who became the sovereign of Egypt after the conquest of this country from the emperors of Constantinople (4). From this moment, alchemy becomes Muslim, without ceasing to breathe the spirit which had breathed into its cradle. The first writer it produced among the Arabs, the famous.
Geber, or more correctly Djaber, born in Koufa, on the banks of the Euphrates, at the beginning of the
13th century, belonged to the sect of the sofis, direct heir and to a certain point, faithful echo
of Alexandrian mysticism. This alliance is easy to explain. By admitting, in the
philosophical and religious order, that there is only one unique substance of beings, or that there is only one being in infinitely varied forms, how can we prevent ourselves from to believe that the sphere of nature and human industry, that all the bodies of which this world is composed are only combinations
and different states of a single body; that all metals, provided that they are subjected to a
sufficiently thickening agent, can be reduced to a single metal which is their common type and their highest degree of perfection?

This is, in fact, the principle from which alchemy emerged, by which it is
first linked to the mystical pantheism of the Greeks of Alexandria and the sofis of Persia.
But little by little as we move away from antiquity and new beliefs take on a
firmer character, this principle disappears from view, and alchemy, instead of holding its place in
a general system ( human knowledge, becomes a completely isolated art, a narrow empiricism to which only the field of illusions and adventures remains. This is how we meet it, at the
beginning of the 10th century.

found a sum of ten pieces of silver, promised as a dowry to his wife, and had to
suffer the humiliation of debt prison; who possessing a secret to protect man from
all illnesses, and even from the infirmities of old age, could not prevent a cataract from
closing his eyes to the light. Such we find it again, a century later, in another
frequently cited author, and probably also
an Arab metician, Artephius or Artephe, who may well have served as a model for the Count of Saint-Germain; because he attributes to himself, like him, an existence of a thousand years, due to the elixir of long life.

Alchemy, passing from Muslims to Christian authors of the Middle Ages, does not change its
character and one can doubt whether it was greatly enriched in their hands by these
unforeseen discoveries which chemistry has inherited. Thus, for example, it is an error to attribute
the invention of gunpowder to Roger Bacon. The composition designated in enigmatic terms by the famous
Franciscan was described before him, with many others, by Marcus Graecus (5) and Arab authors
. We understand that the same horror which pursued the magicians also affected the
alchemists, confused with them by popular ignorance, and that the long captivity inflicted on
Roger Bacon should not encourage their experiments. At least it is certain that alchemy,
to speak the language of the times, is only an accident in scholasticism: it is not linked by
any link to the principles, and does not enter through any door into the frameworks of this study. The objects of his research are, as before, the philosopher's stone and the famous elixir whose existence no one, at this time, no more Saint Thomas and Albert the Great than Raymond Lulle and Arnauld de
Villeneuve, thinks of contesting. It was only at the time of the renaissance of letters,
during the 15th and 16th centuries, that he chose philosophy as his point of support. or
at least a philosophical system, and for its field of operations the whole of nature, it strives
not only to take its place among the sciences, but to employ them all for its use. Here is
how this revolution is accomplished.

The Middle Ages, apart from a few attempts at resistance stifled at the moment, had lived entirely in
the supernatural spaces of faith or in the arid abstractions of logic, admitted as if by
grace to expose and, so to speak, to detail the dogma. The renaissance, rightly cursed by your
supporters of this regime, open to the use of its faculties. He often makes mistakes and misses her; but it is always her that he seeks, even in the pine trees of crude superstitions. He admires the depiction of
natural feelings in the literary masterpieces of the ancients, and natural reason in their
philosophical systems. He demands respect for natural law in institutions and laws. It
ensures the defense of natural interests by demanding, for civil society, an existence distinct and
independent from religious society. Finally, in the arts, naive enthusiasm, the holy inspirations which alone had captivated him, cease to be enough for him, and form and life, imitation, must be joined to the beauty of expression.

faithful to nature. What other order of ideas should enter into this movement in a more direct and more irresistible way than the study of nature properly so called or the whole of the physical sciences? It is true that we encounter in the Middle Ages, from the 12th century, some partial knowledge of astronomy, anatomy, mineralogy, borrowed from Arab scholarship, which itself had drawn on antiquity. Greek;
but nowhere are these knowledges linked into a bundle; and what then bears the name of
physics is only a text with allegories, as in Abelard's Hexaméron; or an imitation of
Timaeus, according to the version of Chalcidius, as in the treatise on the world (the Macrocosm) by
Bernard of Chartres; or a purely logical argumentation on matter and on form, time
, movement, infinity, eternity, as with the most celebrated masters of the 13th
and 14th centuries, when they commented on and developed the physics of Aristotle. A science whose aim is
to study the universe as a single whole, to grasp the relationships which unite all its parts, to
surprise in their very activity the principles and causes of phenomena, to then observe them in their most mysterious operations: in a word, a philosophy of nature, based on the examination of things, not on the discussion of old texts, and daring to clearly confess its design: such an idea did not exist before the era of the renaissance, and it You have to look for it in alchemy books .

Eastern mysticism had just reappeared in all its forms in Kabbalah, restored by.

Reuchlin and Pic de la Mirandole; in Alexandrian Pythagoreanism,
brought to light and developed with imagination by Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa; in Neoplatonism, imported to Italy by Gémistus Plethon, then spread throughout the West by the writings of Marsilio Ficino. Surprised by this light, which had illuminated the cradle of their art, and nevertheless remaining faithful to the dogmas of creation and human freedom, these two bases of their moral education, the alchemists began to see nature from a point of view new, also far from ancient pantheism and the allegories or abstractions of the Middle Ages. It appeared to their eyes as an immense laboratory where nature, always in fusion, and to speak their language, always in fermentation, is modified in a thousand
ways, is dressed in a thousand forms by invisible artists placed under the hand of a
supreme master. . These artists are the forces that move the world and animate all its parts,
from the stars suspended in space to the slightest grain of dust; these are the
immaterial principles that we discover everywhere, when we do not want to admit effects without causes; in
organized beings, as the source of form and life; in raw matter, as the cause of
movement, of the cohesion of the elements and of their selective affinity.

In fact, every body, in the system that concerns us, was associated with a cause, to which it owed its composition and its interior development. Each important organ in animals had its arché or its
particular principle of organization and action. But all these agents were not isolated in the different
bodies assigned to their power; they were called in a hierarchical order, to exercise their
energy, or, to use a time-honored expression, to print their signature on each other
, the stars on animals and plants, these on your metals, and in general the soul over the
organs, the spirit over matter. God, creator of nature, dwelt above her, never ceasing to
pour upon her his light and his strength, his wisdom and his power. Everything it contained was signed with his name. Man, image of God and summary of creation, remained free in the midst of this
universal work, of which he sought to discover all the secrets, and which he imitated for his use, at the same time as he found there, for higher faculties, an object of sublime contemplations.

Such was alchemy in its last period of development, although it always remained, for the
obscure crowd of adepts and in the minds of the multitude, the art of converting metals. It was
not in one day that she reached this height. It was not a single hand that carried her there. But
the man to whom it owes the most, the first who coordinated its principles into a system, and, not
content with admitting them or practicing them on his behalf, attempted to introduce them into
public education, in place of old doctrines, it is Paracelsus. It is therefore right that we
stop before this bold reformer, who, after having inspired fanatical admiration and
implacable hatred, becoming the object of undeserved disdain, still awaits a calm and
impartial appreciation.

Theophrastus Paracelsus are the names by which he became famous; but these are borrowed names
, such as the scholars of that time often took to capture the imagination of the
crowd and tickle their own vanity. I strongly suspect, although the fact, at the distance we
are at, is difficult to verify, that he had no more rights to the title and coat of arms of the Hohenheims, an ancient and very noble house from which he claimed to come. His name was Philippe Bombast; and as his father, a poor village doctor, had already dealt with alchemy, it was undoubtedly from him
that he received, in allusion to the great work, the nickname Aureolus. He was born in 1493 in; Einsiedeln, or Our Lady of the Hermits, in the canton of Schwitz, and not, as was mistakenly said, in
Gaïss, in the canton of Appenzel: because he himself, in his writings, sometimes calls himself
the heresiarch, the wild ass of Einsiedeln. After having received from his father and two famous
alchemists of the time, Abbot Tritheim and Sigismond Fugger, the first notions of the great art, he began
to travel, earning his living sometimes by singing psalms in the streets as Luther had done,
sometimes by predicting the future through astrology, palmistry and the evocation of the dead; sometimes by exchanging the secret of making gold for a piece of bread. He thus traveled throughout Europe, from
north to south and from east to west. He even claims to have been to Constantinople, and to have taken
his adventurous wanderings from there to Tartary and Egypt, in order to go back to the source of
hermetic science. But the exercise of the imaginary arts was for him only a means of increasing
his real knowledge. He visited in passing the most famous universities of France, Italy
and Germany; he studied mineralogy and metallurgy in the mines of Bohemia and Sweden
; and, preparing from then on for the practice of medicine, he compared
the experience with the official teaching of the faculties: village.

After leading this wandering life for ten years, not opening a book, but
seeking truth in nature and in the living words of his fellow men, he returned to
Germany, where his reputation for skill and knowledge soon placed him first among
doctors. As he promised to cure illnesses hitherto considered incurable, people came from
all sides to consult him; because often pain only seeks to deceive itself, and is grateful to
the man of art for giving it hope. Paracelsus had the honor of counting
Erasmus Oecolampadius among his clients. It was on the recommendation of the latter that he was called, in 1526, to the University of Basel, as professor of physics and surgery. Nothing depicts him better than the way in which he took possession of his pulpit. Upon his entry into the amphitheater, where a
crowd was eager to hear him, he gathered together in the form of a pyre the different books which then served as texts for the teaching of medicine, then, having set them on fire, he watched them fall into ashes and go up in smoke. It was, in his mind, an anger which had just ended, another which had just begun.

After such a start, there was nothing left for him to spare. Also, he puts no limits to his
enthusiasm as a reformer and his pride as a scholar; both cloud his head like
the fumes of drunkenness. It's not up to me, he wrote in the preface to one of his works (6), and
probably he used the same language in front of his listeners, it's not up to me to walk behind
you, it's it's up to you to walk behind me. Follow me then, follow me, Galen, Rhasés,
Montagnana Mesueh, etc., follow me and you too, gentlemen of Paris, of Montpellier; you of
Swabia, you of Misnia, you of Cologne, you of Vienna, and all that inhabit the plains of the
Danube, the banks of the Rhine, the islands of the sea; you Italian, you Dalmatian, you Athenian, you Greek, Arab or Israelite, follow me! I am your king, the monarchy belongs to me; it is I who govern and who must gird your loins. A little further on he writes: “Yes, I tell you, the wisp of hair on the back of my neck knows more than you and all your authors; and the strings of my shoes are more learned than your Galen and your Avicenna, and my beard has more experience than all your universities (7). »

It has been claimed that Paracelsus, by taking it so high with the science of his time, despised what he
did not know, and the custom he adopted of giving his lessons and writing his works in
German made people believe that even Latin was foreign to him. These assumptions are unfounded
. When we have had the courage to live with him for a while, we see that Paracelsus
is absolutely aware of nothing that was commonly taught in the universities of the 16th century;
that he speaks with great sense of Pliny, of Quintilian, of Aristotle, of Plato and of the ancients in
general; and that the Latin books, the Latin phrases in his style which are incorporated into his
German works can generally pass as innocent in the face of grammar. But his claim is to owe nothing to this past with which he wants to put an end, and to be a completely original genius
who, formed by nature, also addresses those who have not been spoiled by a false education. , to simple and upright minds , to common people. Hence the contempt he affects for books, the care he takes to
have almost none in his house, and the ignorance of which he often boasts with no less
pride and as little foundation than of his science. Hence, this predilection for the
vulgar language, of which we also find an example in Descartes: because the collection of his so-called
Latin works is only a faded imitation in which we cannot recognize it. Again, how
does he speak it, how does he write it, this shapeless idiom of 16th century Germany?

With a harshness of accent, with a crudeness of images that one rarely finds among the
peasants of the cantons of Schwitz and Basel-Landschaft, and also with a luxury of
pedantic neologisms of which the tradition is much less lost on the other side of the Rhine.
Paracelsus only stayed a year at the University of Basel, where his words, after having aroused astonishment and attracted an extraordinary crowd, were only addressed to a small number of believers, determined to follow him until at the end. This rapid decline is easily explained by the novelty of Paracelsus' ideas and the barbarity of his pitching, unsuitable for training doctors according to established rules. The degrading passion with which he was suddenly taken for wine, after twenty-five years of completely Muslim sobriety , must also have contributed to it: because, if we are to believe a very respectable testimony, that of Oporin the famous printer who was his secretary for two years, he was often half drunk when he climbed into his pulpit or went to the sick bed, and even when he dictated his numerous works. Finally, having quarreled with the magistrates, abruptly leaving the city. But what above all provoked this decision was Paracelsus' taste
for travel, and the conviction, often expressed in his writings, that there is no
better school for learning the truth. “He,” he said (8), “who wants to amass true
knowledge, must trample all books under his feet and begin to travel: because each country he
travels through is a page of nature. The doctor, particularly, will reap a great fruit from
travels. Whoever wants to know a large number of diseases must see many countries: The further
he goes, the more he will gain in experience and knowledge. "

Indeed, as soon as he left Basel, that we find him resuming his wandering life, in 1528 in
Colmar, in 1529 in Nurumberg, in Saint-Gall in 1531, in Augsburg in l536. For the next ten years, he lived in turn in the main cities of Moravia, Hungary, the capital of
Austria, the small town of Villach in Carinthia, his former residence, and finally
Salzburg. It was there, in the hospital of Saint-Etienne, that in 1541 after having bequeathed his property: to the poor, he ended his laborious and agitated career at the age of forty-eight, he left, as I said , fanatical disciples and adversaries, or rather bitter enemies. He left behind a reform
which still continues, if we look closely, and which even his enemies were obliged to undergo
in its essential aspects. He left works whose titles alone would fill several pages,
and which collected in a very incomplete manner, nevertheless form no less than ten volumes in
4° in Huser's German edition. Obviously, the person whose intelligence, in such a
short interval and in the circumstances which have just been recounted, was able to produce such effects, was not an ordinary man.

Despite this, when we stop at the first impression that the life and writings of
Paracelsus give rise to, we cannot help but see in him an adventurer and a charlatan. But when, after
having glanced at his contemporaries, we return to him with a free spirit of prejudice, we
allow ourselves to be won over to a completely different opinion. Charlatanism, boasting, the grossest
superstition mixed with audacity and incredulity even the taste for adventures in the order of ideas
as in that of events: these are the traits which in some way make up the
general physiognomy of the philosophers and scholars of the renaissance; we also find them
in Cornelius Agrippa, in François Patrizzi, Jérôme Cardan, Jordano Bruno.

Vanini Campanella, and even more so among professional alchemists, Van Helmont and Robert
Fludd. Like newly emancipated schoolchildren, the minds of this era, barely liberated
from the harsh discipline of scholasticism, use their young independence with enthusiasm, and
the agitation of their thoughts manifests itself even in their interior life. To be fair to
Paracelsus, we must therefore not insist too much on the vices and errors which are common to him in
his time; it is necessary to study it in the qualities and in the thoughts which properly belong to it.
The first idea that strikes us when reading Paracelsus' books is the absolute freedom that he
demands for science in the sphere that belongs to it, and the infinite career that he opens before
it. On this point he has not been surpassed by modern reformers. Science, for him, is
nature itself opening to the gaze of man, reflecting itself in his mind, while
God is reflected in it. He also happens to define it - a revelation of God in the light of
nature; so that any authority that intervenes between us and things appears to him to be a usurpation,
an encroachment on divine authority. But he distinguishes, as our Cartesianism did later,
between the order of science and that of faith, between natural philosophy and revealed religion:
one rises from the earth, towards the sky, on the wings of the reason ; the other descends from heaven to earth on the wings of grace. Identical in their essence, they must come together in man without
being confused (9).

Science, being infinite like nature, requires, according to Paracelsus, the assistance of the human race,
and is never the share of a single man or a single people. It is a truth that he supports on the
testimony of experience as well as that of reason: because he observed that men
do not bring from birth neither the same aptitudes nor the same inclinations for the work of
intelligence ; but some succeed in one branch of knowledge or the arts, others
in another: and this is true of nations as well as individuals. Also Paracelsus returns on this
occasion to his favorite theme: the only way to learn is to travel the world (10).

Just as they are divided in space, the gifts of intelligence and science are divided
in time. They are not simply passed down as a tradition; they develop and
are perfected from one generation to the next, so that not only do the same arts, the
same sciences appear more accomplished the further we move away from their origin, but that new ones are
formed every day. new ones of which our predecessors were not aware. The doctrine of
progress, so new to us, is taught by Paracelsus in the clearest terms and with
an ardor of faith barely matched by the philosophers of the 18th century. We very often cite this
thought of Pascal who, transporting the childhood of the human spirit into antiquity and its old age into
modern times, shows us the whole sequence of men as a single man who
always subsists and who continually learns. Apart from the inimitable beauty of the language, where Pascal has no predecessors or successors, what difference is there between this idea and the one that Paracelsus expresses in a passage that I am going to translate: "It is necessary that inconsiderate people all of us as we are, the longer we live, the more educated we become, and the more centuries God takes to instruct us, the more he gives breadth to our knowledge; the closer we approach the
last judgment, the more we grow in science, in wisdom, in penetration, in intelligence: for all the
germs deposited in our mind will reach maturity; so that the latest comers will be
the most advanced in all things, and the first will be the least. Only then will we
understand these words of the Gospel: the first will be last (11)".

Applying this principle to the profession he has chosen, Paracelsus opens
a vast field of hope to human pain and infirmities. "Do not say , he cries (l2), that an illness
is incurable; say that you cannot and that you do not know how to cure her. Then you will avoid the curse
that attaches to false prophets; then we will search, until we find it, a new secret
of art. Christ said: Question the Scripture. Why then should we not question nature as
well as the holy books?

The immediate goal that Paracelsus sets for himself is the reform of medicine, then shared, as he
teaches us (13), between empiricism, superstition and the routine of school. The first
only used specific ones, of which he knew neither the principles nor the way of acting, nor the relationship with the organism. The second only used talismans and evocations. Finally the last,
slavishly attached to Galen and the Arabs, physical, hot, cold, dry and humid, on which the famous axiom is based, well contested today: Opposites must be fought by opposites. Contraria contrariis.

Paracelsus, by means of chemical analysis and reasoning together, undertakes to lay
bare the true principles, the irreducible elements of our organization and the substances capable
of modifying it, either for good or for evil. He, who is usually represented as the type of
empiricism, branded the empirical doctor with the epithets of executioner and assassin (14). He
also doesn't want us to stick to pure theory. “A theory,” he says (15), “which is not demonstrated
by experience, resembles a saint who does not perform miracles.” But to what extent
should theory be associated with experience? ?At what height of speculation must we look for the
principles in order to understand their effects and appropriate their use? It is here that Paracelsus,
ignoring all measurement, gets lost in the immensity, while crisscrossing it with brilliant We would be very unsuccessful , according to him, in illuminating the Mysteries of human organization if we isolated it from the bodies which act on it and which together make up our sublunary world. This world, with
all that it contains men, animals, minerals, plants, is subordinate to the rest of the universe, and
mainly to the closest spheres, to the sun and the planets. Who would dare deny the action of the
sun on ourselves and on everything that surrounds us? surrounds? Well, we cannot say that stars
even closer to us, and celestial bodies in general, do not exercise an influence on our earth that is as real, although less sensitive. Finally, all these bodies only exist, move and
act on each other by certain interior forces, certain active and
invisible principles which, themselves, are only the ministers of power and reason. divine always
present in things. Medicine cannot therefore detach itself from the universal science of nature
, which Paracelsus, for the particular goal he proposes, divides into three parts and, so to speak
, into three zones: philosophy, astronomy and alchemy. If we add the practice of morality
or virtue, essential, according to him, to those who want to practice the art of healing, we will have what he calls the four columns of medicine.

It has been said that Paracelsus' philosophy was entirely pantheistic: nothing could be more inaccurate. Pantheism confuses God and nature. Paracelsus distinguishes them, and loudly confesses the dogma of your creation.

Panteism makes the soul an idea of ​​the body, subject like it to the invariable laws of nature, or a fleeting mode of a universal thought which does not belong to any thinking being. Paracelsus sees in the human soul a free being which dominates nature, while imitating you, much greater, he says, than the stars, and which God, after having created it, leads and enlightens, not by replacing itself. to him, but leaving him the task of fertilizing through the work of the divine germs entrusted to his intelligence. But it is true that, in the distinguished nature of its author, Paracelsus maintains the unity of substance, borrowed from Kabbalah and the schools of Alexandria. It admits, under the name of the great arcana or the great mystery (mysterium magnum), a raw, invisible, active matter, from which emerged in order , at the voice of God, all the simple and compound bodies, the elements, the stars, minerals, plants, animals, and finally the human body, the most learned composition of the supreme being, the summary and image of the universe; for it is formed with all the elements and with all the forces of creation(16).

It is also true that below the human soul, at an insurmountable distance, it
recognizes, under the name of spirit, an active principle of organization, conservation and life for
each body, and memory for each organ of the human body: animal spirit, vital, seminal, archaea,
in animals; vegetable spirit in plants; spirit of salt, sulfur and mercury in
minerals, or principle of concretion, combustion and fusibility in raw matter,
in these very elements which passed, since Empedocles, for indecomposable bodies. All
these spirits, or particular arcana, as Paracelsus sometimes calls them, are only the various
states or increasingly obscure transformations of the great arcana (17).

What Paracelsus calls alchemy is only the development and necessary application of his
philosophy. Alchemy, for him, is no longer the arid process of making gold, but of appropriating for our use, through a series of operations imitated from nature, everything that can be useful to us: because, " nature, he says (18), is the first and greatest of all alchemists: the transformation of bodies is nothing
other than Life. (19) “Every man becomes an alchemist, who takes nature as a model,
who, seizing the principles that it implements and using them in the same way,

We immediately see the connections that exist between this system and the medical reform of
Paracelsus. The most active principles of bodies, released by analysis and substituted for the bodies themselves in the treatment of diseases: the chemical combinations put in place of the
repulsive mixtures used until then; the organic and vital force of nature invoked in preference to
the mechanical force of instruments, or to the dreaded intervention of iron and fire; Finally.
observation, the examination of principles, instead of blind routine; these are the main features
of this reform which has, in some way, spiritualized the art of healing, and which, brought back from its excesses, the inevitable consequences of a revolution, continues its path even today. It is easy to imagine that Paracelsus was less fortunate in calling astronomy to the aid of medicine ;
for if it is true, in general thesis, that all the parts of the universe are linked
together and act on each other, it is nevertheless impossible to define these relationships and
to make any use of them, if they do not fall under observation or the laws of calculation. So
it happens more than once that he confuses astronomy with astrology, and falls back into these
superstitious practices that he wanted to destroy through the observation of nature. What he says about the resemblance of the stars with the germs of living beings, about that of our planetary sphere with
the structure of the human body and about the signatures, capable of discovering for us, through the
external conformation of things, their properties and their principles , the most secret;, all this part of his.

system, although full of imagination, often with original views is of a man who dreams or who
speaks in intoxication, not of a mind which innovates and which thinks. It was undoubtedly also in one of these frequent moments of divorce from reason that he dictated to one of his secretaries his little Treatise on Nymphs, Sylphs, Gnomes and Salamanders (20), and that he wrote a few pages with his own hand
, an expression of the highest degree of delirium, to prove that certain beings similar
to us and known in the language of alchemy under the name of homunculi, can be born outside
the ways of your nature ( 2l).

Despite these differences, Paracelsus is nonetheless one of the most vigorous and
original geniuses of an era fertile in great intelligences. He resurrected the natural sciences through philosophy and regenerated the natural sciences through spiritualism,
abandoned for centuries to chance and routine; he opened to them an infinite career of
conquests and hopes that the imagination had only dared to seek outside of nature; he is
perhaps the first to have stated clearly, and with considered conviction, this principle of
human perfectibility which is confirmed every day, in the domain of science and industry,
by new triumphs of the mind over nature. matter and which, despite all the apologies of the past,
modern society keeps in its consciousness like a religion. Without doubt, he is not a Galileo,
a Bacon, nor a Descartes; but he opened your way to them by recalling human reason to the
feeling of its strength and its freedom. As for alchemy, its history presents us with a
teaching full of interest; it shows us how desire and imagination gradually open
a path towards science. First we ardently wish for health and fortune. What could be more
spontaneous and more natural. Soon, by realizing this wish through thought, we dream of the transmutation of metals and the elixir of long life. Curiosity and action get involved; we want to be sure if there is
anything founded in this dream; we question nature, we search it at random, we torment it in all
directions, and we find what we were not looking for, or much more than we were looking for, a whole order of new knowledge from which we we will know how to extract inexhaustible treasures. What reason for indulgence towards the past and hope for the future?

FRANCK, from the Institute.

---

(1) Natural history. book. XXXIII, chap 4.
(2) Historiarum adversus paganes Lib VIIe 16.
(3) See his lexicon, at the word chemistry.
(4) See the learned work of MM. Reinaud and Favé. Fine Greek, war fires and the
origins of gunpowder. in-8°; Paris, 1845.
(5) Liber igniuum ad comoiurendos hetes: id N°4 Paris, 180.1.
(6) Pracelsus from the book Paragranum in volume 10, vol. in 4°, from the German edition of Huser, 10
vols. in 4°, Basel 1589-92.
(7) Ubi supra, p. 18.
(8) Fourth defense in favor of the new medicine, volume 1, p. l35 edition cited.
(9) Astronomia magna or philosopher of the macrocosm and the microcosm, t. X, ed. cit.
(l0) Liber Paraganum; fourth defense, volume II p. 135, cited edition.
(11) Liber de inventione artium, t. IX, p. 174 ed cit.
(12) First defense in favor of the new medicine, volume II p. 125, ed. cit.
(13) Paraminim de qinque entibus omnium morborum, volume I, page 3, ed. cit.
(14) The book paragaranum, t. II, p. 56, ed. cit.
(15) Ubi supra.
(l6) Astronomia magna or philosophy of the macrocosm and the microcosm, t. X from ed. cit.
(l7) Ubi supra Philosophia ad Athenienes Volume Vlll, p. 1 et seq., cited edition.
(18) The Book Paragranum, chap. III, in volume II of the same edition.
(l9) Philosophia ad Athenienes, fourth text, volume VIII, cited edition.
(20) From Nymphis Sylphis Pygmoeis and Salamandris, t. IX, p. 45 of the edict. cit.
(2l) De homunculis et monstris, ubi supra, p, 311

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ARTIFICIAL GOLD TRANSMUTATION OF METALS
INTRODUCTION

It is not for a simple worker of science such as myself to claim to be doing
pure science in this introduction; expose some new facts, bring them closer to other
previously known facts, highlight the connection that unites them to constitute the completely
new branch of science which will henceforth take its place under the name of TRANSSMUTATION OF METALS:
this is what I must do limit. The facts, at least the satisfactory facts and in sufficiently
respectable numbers, are lacking and will probably be lacking for a long time to come.

Naturally, facts come to us much less quickly than new ideas, regarding
more or less plausible hypotheses on the metamorphoses of metallic bodies into one another. This is
because facts can only be conquered by one. very long, very difficult, very expensive work; time
is always lacking, and time is existence, it’s life, it’s everything. For me, if I hope
to succeed quickly in making the world accept my discovery, which must be, after all, one of the
glories of our century to which it will give the means to compose and decompose bodies at
will, it is by perseverance requires the assistance and support of enlightened men, men
of the future.

Let us first notice how, through this discovery, the three kingdoms, which should in reality be
one, are brought together and linked to each other. The naming of inorganic beings
seems to me eminently improper; these beings also have their organs; they only aspire to perfect themselves , to live in their own way, passing from age to age through various more or less
prolonged stations. The duration of these stations depends on the circumstances more or less favorable to the development of what I will call mineral individualities, until they arrive
at their last degree of perfection, to be reborn in another form, after having exceeded this
limit, and then come to the aid, too, of the perfectibility of these first individualities.
Nitrogen, this body essential to the growth of beings from both the animal and plant kingdoms, must
also play an important role in that of beings from the mineral kingdom. And who tells us that nitrogen is not also essential to the perfectibility of this whole order of beings? Can't he act on them
by his presence alone? These points will undoubtedly be clarified later by experience. This whole
set indicates the intimate relationships between all the different bodies; it makes perceptible the unknown force which governs all beings: it leads invincibly to what will be the uncontested dogma of science in the future: the unity of matter.

This dogma, now tacitly accepted by scientists in good faith, is the only effect consistent with the unity of God; each new step forward in science clothes us with new aspects of the omnipotence by which everything subsists in the universe.

I do not think that it will be possible any time soon to be able to demonstrate straight away that metals
are compound bodies, and to immediately demonstrate this through analysis and synthesis
; it will be necessary for a long time to stick to long-term experiments, carried out in the presence
of poorly developed forces, but of a long prolonged action: it will even be necessary to
involve the masses to arrive at the factual proof of the composition of the metals. But once
we have the key to the system of combining forces, the duration of the experiments can be
significantly shortened; because nothing will prevent us from modifying its forms endlessly. Until then, let's go slowly, let's not ask too much from our experiences at once, it's the only way to approach the
goal and reach it without ruinous costs; on the contrary, we risk losing all the fruit by wanting
to go too quickly; I can speak about it with knowledge of the facts, because this is what happened to me myself.

My intention is to devote a few public sessions to the presentation of my work on the
transmutation of metals; I will submit to my listeners the artificial gold that I have obtained, I
will develop the facts relating to my discovery with all the details, likely to shed light on the
phenomenon of the transmutation into pure gold of alloyed silver.

I would have used this means of publicity and propagation a long time ago, if I had only obeyed
my keen desire to increase the number of men imbued like me with the truths of the
transmutation of metals.
But the moment didn't seem to have arrived; no echo would have responded to my voice. Today,
scientists known and honored by the public have had the boldness (because it is a very great one) to affirm the possibility of the transmutation of metals, from which necessarily follows that of composition, and the implicit admission of the unity of matter; I never claimed anything else. So I believe I have at this moment what I lacked at the beginning of the chances to gather an audience and to
make them listen to me. If, through this method of publicity, I take just a few steps forward in the
science of the transmutation of metals, and my effort will be amply rewarded.

As for my reasons for releasing to public curiosity the series of my previous memoirs on
this subject the most powerful of these reasons lies in the requests which are daily
addressed to me in writing, by those who wish to have this complete series: I think I am at both useful and pleasant to that portion of the scholarly world which wishes to take an interest in it, by bringing together my Memoirs in the order in which they were presented to the Academy. Moreover, the experiments
that I continue without interruption, for the most part, require a lot of time. The results of my
new work, as I carry them out, will be successively communicated to the Academy
: they will form a second series of memoirs.

I have reason to maintain the well-founded hope that the commission, composed of MM. Thénard, Dumas and
Chevreul, charged with examining my operations, will not take long to make their report, and will
come to my powerful aid for the continuation of my experiments.

I am told: if this discovery of the transmutation of metals could be true, it would be a great
public misfortune. I cannot let this objection pass; I must answer it in the very interest of
my discovery.

First of all, I barely understand how reasoning of this nature dares to occur in the
middle of the 19th century. If the artificial production of precious metals may cause some
disruption in transactions, this disadvantage will be offset by incalculable advantages.

The modifications which may result from this will be gradual, as are before our eyes those
which result from the billions already poured into circulation by the placers of California and
Australia; gold production in the latter country is officially estimated at 185a, at 8
million per week, or 416 million per year! What troubles, what public disasters can we
point out as produced by this superabundance of one of the signs representative of wealth? H
The same will be true of the consequences of transmutation, the inevitable day, perhaps soon, when
it can be carried out by economic processes and enter into the ordinary conditions of
industrial chemistry. We can, moreover, rely with complete security on the measures to be taken, if
necessary, by an enlightened government to safeguard all interests.

What was not initially objected to the applications of steam? Yet we see
your immense advantages growing day by day; we see it increasingly invigorating all
branches of industry and commerce, bringing activity, well-being and life to all points of the globe
; and the steam has not said its last word; and from one hour to the next, it can be passed,
overwhelmed, replaced. I say the same about electricity. Why are those who fear the
artificial production of metals not terrified of electricity, of this magical force which
transmits the exchange of thought with a speed a hundred times greater than that of the winds? and the
applications of electricity are only just beginning; they must give birth to many other miracles!

The transmutation of metals will therefore have its turn, without any more difficulties, without any more
truly dangerous results. We can challenge the deepest mind, the most lively and
penetrating intelligence, to foresee everything that this discovery can produce. In industry, it will bring significant improvements, easily oxidizable metals being able to be replaced by those which
are difficult to oxidize; we understand what our household utensils would gain in terms
of health and cleanliness. The sciences, medicine, physics, chemistry, are all
equally called upon, each in its attributions, to spread over humanity, as consequences of the
transmutation, of metals, countless benefits won by the sole effort of human spirit
fighting victoriously against the brute forces of nature.

Let us carefully note a momentous fact which must occur even before this whole future can
be realized. Land property will take on a real value, more solid and more stable than
previously; When precious metals are demonetized, this increase in the value of
land ownership will occur by itself. Why wouldn't governments, once the
unlimited production of gold and silver has begun to come within the realm of cost,
not grant a premium to land ownership,
precious ? It would be much more rightly so; because land ownership, the fundamental basis of
commerce and industry, tranquility, general well-being and public prosperity, has
much more right than gold and silver, whose place it should take. , to represent all
the values ​​by itself . What, after all, is to the hungry man, for example, an ingot of gold and silver, if he cannot exchange it for something edible - In times of famine, the The owner of wheat is certainly richer than the owner of gold; the first does without the second, which cannot do
without the first. The value of precious metals is only of the second order; it is, in certain
respects, purely artificial and imaginary. From the day they cease to be recognized as having a
constant and legal value, this value will disappear; gold and silver will only have a value
subject to rise and fall according to the same circumstances which affect all your
industrial values. Land ownership, the least subject of all to these variations, is therefore the
most apt to represent all values.

Agriculture will benefit greatly from the transmutation of metals; it will occupy the hands made
available by the reduction in the number of those employed in the mines; it will attract to itself by the attraction of the higher salaries which it will be able to pay due to the greater stability of
land ownership, the intelligent hands which today desert your countryside to come to the cities
to clutter your avenues with all the industrial careers; I lack space to complete this
overview of the social good arising from applications of metal transmutation.

I now have a few words to address to young people who would like to experiment
in this direction. The problem, let them know it well, is most difficult; the solution can be slow and
laborious. Although several times I have succeeded in solving part of the problem by the transmutation
of alloyed silver into pure gold, I still have serious difficulties in repeating this experience - I
therefore cannot overly commit those who will begin to do so. work, to proceed with prudence, not to
risk all their means of action at once, if they do not want to expose themselves to innumerable torments
, to the most bitter disappointments, to the loss of their freedom, of their rest. This is not, you will say, the way to go quickly: nothing is more true. But also, the path that I indicate is the least
difficult, the least dangerous of all; it is the only one that the man guided by a saga must follow
foresight. Therefore, devote to your experiments only what your means allow you to
risk; you will thus be able to continue them for longer and give yourself, through this alone, a greater
chance of achieving your goal, without excess expenditure. If, on the contrary, you sacrifice all your assets through too much impatience, if, in your haste, you inconsiderately multiply experiences
one after the other, what will happen - You will have risked losing everything without achieving anything; despair will overtake you, and who knows where it may lead you? So preserve all your courage carefully , and be careful not to let yourself be carried away by some partial success. What struggles did I myself have to endure against the enthusiasm of my first results? I would have been capable, if
I had not succeeded in controlling myself, of sacrificing everything to my discovery. But I had in mind
the examples that so many inventors have left; their sad story served as a brake on my ardor. This is
how I was able to persevere in my work and pursue the consequences of my discovery. The
moments I devote to it are, I must affirm, the sweetest of my existence, and my only
regret is not being able to give more of my time to these dear studies. The
plotted solution of the problem is a noble and great work; it promises everything to those who accomplish it: honor, glory, fortune, the realization of the most unlimited hopes, the most immense desires.

But, between you and this result, expect to encounter difficulties no less great,
proportionate to the magnitude of the result itself: a solution for which the word sublima does not
seem exaggerated to me, when we consider the immeasurable consequences.

That this solution is possible, do not doubt it; the facts acquired by my research are
irrefutable proof of this.

If my own testimony does not seem sufficiently free from prejudice, let me
adduce others whose weight in such a matter cannot be contested. Here are the terms in which
Mr. Victor Meunier, the eminent publicist, reports on my work, in the Press of June 24,
1854.

“The immediate predecessor of Mr. Tiffereau in the pursuit of the great work, is (except for error or
omission) the author of a brochure which appeared in 1832 under the title: Hermès unveiled. Despite the
promises of the title, the author behaves as an ambitious follower to deserve the praise addressed by
Paracelsus to those who, having received communication of the great secrets of God (Magnalia Dei), have the prudence to keep them hidden until the coming of Elijah, the artist.

“Mr. Tiffereau, we must first of all do him justice, is more elementary than his predecessor. We
see immediately that it is not in the Works of Hermes, in the Pimander, in your Table of
Seven Chapters, in the Emerald Table, that he sought the mysterious key of gold. It will not be
necessary to do for him what Aulendus did for Paracelsus, a dictionary of the terms
he used.

"Former student and chemistry tutor at the professional school of Nantes, if he meets the
Hermetic philosophers, it is because after having poured so much contempt on it, chemistry
nowadays tends to make its junction with alchemy. Here, as in so many other circumstances, it seems
, in fact, that adult science will end up avenging philosophical thought for the outrages that a
science in its beginnings has lavished on it.

"Chemistry n It is no doubt, as in the time of Suidas, the art of composing gold and silver;
but it calls itself the science of the transformations of matter. It admits as a
fundamental principle that the properties of bodies are linked to their molecular arrangement. She says with Laurent: Form, number and order are more essential than matter (1). "

On the still open tomb of the immortal creator of the theory of the unity of
organic composition, a chemist said: "This theory is now penetrating the chemical sciences
and is perhaps preparing a revolution in ideas (2 )." And what numerous series of facts
borrowed from mineral chemistry, organic chemistry, crystallography, could we
invoke in support of this thought? Beyond the very principle of chemistry, the principle of
radical homogeneity of metals, or as we would say today of their Isometry, the
still uncrossed distance does not seem insurmountable. "

In his lessons in chemical philosophy taught at the Collège de France, Mr. Dumas expressed himself
thus about isometry, principle whose discovery is due to him: “Would it be permissible,” he said, “
to admit simple isomeric bodies (3).” This question, you see, closely concerns the
transmutation of metals. Resolved affirmatively, it gives chances of success to the
philosopher's stone. “It is therefore necessary, said Mr. Dumas, to consult experience, and experience, it must be said, is not in opposition so far with the possibility of the transmutation of simple bodies, at least of certain simple bodies. »

Mr. Louis Figuier, in his book on alchemy and alchemists, without resolving the question of the
transmutation of metals, does not speak out against it and visibly allows us to see the possibility
of this phenomenon. Here is what he says on this subject: “By a strange turnaround, and indeed likely to
inspire us with reserve in the appreciation of the scientific views of the past, alchemy of our days,
after having, for fifty years. considered unassailable the principle of the simplicity of
metals, today inclines us to abandon it. The existence, in ammoniacal salts, of a metal
composed of hydrogen and nitrogen, which bears the name of Ammonium, is today unanimously admitted.

In recent years we have succeeded in producing a whole series of compounds
containing a real metal, and this metal is made up of the union of 3 or 4 different bodies. The
number of combinations of this kind increases every day, and tends more and more to cast doubt
on the simplicity of metals. » Let us conclude from this examination that the facts borrowed from experience offered sufficient characteristics of probability to fool the minds of the observers,
and thus authorize their belief in the great phenomenon which they were pursuing. Theory of derived radicals, page 5. — Extract from the Revue Scientifique et Industrielle.

2. Words of Mr. Dumas.
3. M. Dumas isomeric bodies those which having the same composition, have different chemical properties
. This word often receives another meaning.

FIRST MEMORY

Presented to the Academy of Sciences in the session of June 27, 1853.

Metals are compound bodies.

To all the marvelous industrial creations which will signal the 19th century to posterity, I
come, humble and obscure worker, to contribute my stone for the common edifice. Steam and electricity
have already changed the face of the world (and who can say where their power will stop?); but there are other motives for public wealth", and I have come to point out one whose discovery will change many
working conditions and will frighten the most daring minds with its impact. It takes no less, for
me to decide to entrust to the public the discovery that I have made, that the awareness of its importance and the honor which will spring upon my country of having been the cradle of such an invention.
I have discovered the means of making gold artificial, I made gold.

At this announcement, I already hear the clamors of the unbelievers and the sarcasm of the learned;
but to both I will answer: Listen and see.

Student and chemistry tutor at the higher professional school of Nantes in 1840, I
devoted myself mainly to the study of metals, and, convinced that this part of chemical sciences
offered an immense field to be harvested for a man of observation, I resolved to undertake a
journey of exploration to Mexico, that classic land of metals. In December 1842 I left: and
hiding my secret work under the shelter of a still new art, the daguerreotype, I was able to travel
in all directions these immense countries, these placers, this province of Sonora, these Californias which, since then, have been so fixed the eyes of the world. It was by studying the deposits of metals, their gangues, their various physical states, it was by questioning the miners and comparing their
impressions, that I acquired the certainty that the metals underwent in their formation certain laws,
certain stages unknown but the results of which strike the mind of anyone who studies them carefully.
Once placed at this point of view, my research became more ardent. more fruitful; little by
little the light came, and I understood the order in which I had to begin my work. After five
years of research and labor, he succeeded in producing a few grams of perfectly pure gold.

It is impossible for me to describe the immense joy I felt upon reaching this much desired goal. From then on, I have only one fixed thought: to return to France and make my country benefit from my discovery. Leaving Mexico was very difficult then, because the Americans had just captured Vera Cruz,
Mexico and Tampico, and it took no less than six months to come from Guadalajara to Tampico,
where I embarked for the France in May 1848.

On my arrival, I again noted the properties of the gold that I had artificially obtained:
crystallization, appearance, density, perfect malleability, ductility, absolute insolubility in simple acids, solubility in aqua regia and alkaline sulphides: nothing is missing. The quantity that I
possess today leaves me with no doubt about the fact of the discovery and the low cost
with which I was able to prepare it.

Now, to eliminate the marvelousness with which this discovery will not fail to be
surrounded in the eyes of many people, I must say what are the views which guided me in
my work, and how my success was work of logical deductions already acquired in science.
Metals are not simple bodies, but rather compound bodies.

their research on the nature of metals: guided by a mystical thought and seeing in all the
bodies of nature a mixture of matter and divine emanation, they thought they could wrest from nature
the secret of this mixture, and, releasing the matter raw of its essence, bring it back to a
unique typical for metals, at least. Hence the idea of ​​what they called the great work, the philosopher's stone, the transmutation of metals.

Divided into several sects, the enlightened vainly flattered themselves with discovering a panacea capable of prolonging the life of men beyond the ordinary term, while others, the most positive, limited themselves to seeking the transformation of base or imperfect metals into precious and perfect metals,
that is to say silver, gold.

The labors of these men remained sterile, except for the few heroic remedies with which they endowed
the art of healing; remedies drawn mainly from antimonial and mercurial preparations ; At the beginning of this century, it was in good taste to throw sarcasm with both
hands at these madmen from another era, and today few scholars hardly do
justice to them. the idea, to the mother thought which guided the alchemists.

Let us first pose a fruitful principle admitted today by all chemists: The properties of
bodies are the result of their molecular constitution.

Nature presents us with a large number of polymorphic bodies which, depending on whether they crystallize in one system or another, acquire very different properties, without, however, their
composition being altered or changed in any way. Thus the rhombohedral lime carbonate
or limestone spar, and the prismatic lime carbonate or arragonite have exactly the same
composition, and yet have very different properties. Science has managed to
produce these two salts at will in these two forms. One of them has double refraction,
the other does not; one is denser than the other, one finally crystallizes at ordinary temperature
, the other only at a temperature of more than 100 degrees. Everyone knows that sulfur
has different properties depending on the temperature to which it is exposed and the
crystalline form it is made to take. A host of metal oxides, such as certain iron and
chromium oxides, substituting for other bases in salts, give them various properties in
typical forms. Oxides of zinc, mercury, several combinations of these metals,
change properties under the influence of a change in molecular constitution produced by heat
or electrical forces. Spongy platinum and clay, heated to white, determine, by
their simple immersion in a mixture of oxygen and hydrogen, the combination of these two gases,
the result of which is water.

In organic nature, don't we see similar phenomena occurring every day?

Isn't starch transformed into sugar by its sole contact with sulfuric acid, without, however,
the latter being altered? Is it not the presence of a nitrogenous material that is due to the
phenomenon of fermentation which causes organic matter to undergo such curious
transformations? Finally, isn't cyanogen, this compound radical, the product of the action of an
alkaline base on a nitrogenous material? I could cite a thousand other facts in support of the principle
stated, if I were not afraid of appearing to want to flaunt science. I will therefore simply repeat
that there is nothing but very correct in this thought that: the constitution of a body being changed, this body acquires new properties, while retaining its intimate nature, its composition, if the we
want.

Consequently, it will be enough to discover the body which, by its catalytic force, can act on the body
that we want to transform, then to put the latter in certain conditions of contact with it, to
carry out this transformation. This is the principle which is not denied by any chemist today, the one which I applied, and to which I owe my success.

In a similar vein, I will repeat here everything that has been said and written by the moderns on the
probability of the composition of metals. If we start from the theory of Stahl, who considered metals
as formed of a radical and a principle called phlogiston to arrive at Lavoisier
who, by his theory of combustion, has led observers astray for so long; if finally
we consider that all the bodies of nature, plants and animals, in incalculable numbers. are
nevertheless formed of three or four elements, despite their immense diversity, and if we reflect that
it is only with a very small number of simple substances that nature produces all the
compounds, is it not natural to think that the forty or so metals, considered today
as simple bodies, are only mixtures, combinations, perhaps, of a
single radical with another unknown body, poorly studied, no doubt,
only modifies the properties of this radical, and shows us forty metals where there is only one -
How can we admit that nature has created this quantity of various metals to form the
inorganic kingdom, when, with four elements at most , it has created such a prodigious quantity of
plants and animals. And, if a man comes to demonstrate this unknown body which has escaped so much
research, and to make it act on a given metal, what is there- Is it surprising that this man
would change the nature of this metal by giving it, with a different molecular constitution, the
properties of another metal in which this constitution naturally exists?

That's enough on this subject for any man with some knowledge versed in the study of physical sciences,
and for the common sense of all. I now manage to clarify the position. I was able to produce gold and
will achieve the complete transformation of a given quantity of a metal in pure gold. I have already said that this given quantity was a few grams, and until now I have not yet managed to
operate on a mass considerable enough to be able to say that I have succeeded on a large scale. To achieve this, I need other resources, I ask them from those who want to get in touch with me. I
do not want, unless I am forced to do so, to have the fate of so many inventors disdained in their homeland, to take the fruit of my discovery abroad, and to share it with our rivals in industry. I appeal
to my compatriots, and I expect from publicity the help I need to perfect my work.

In closing, I believe it is unnecessary and perhaps imprudent to reflect on the immense scope of
the production of artificial gold: France has the largest cash in Europe, around three
billion francs; the upcoming depreciation of gold, due to the abundance of this metal coming from
California and Australia, are two facts easy enough to compare so that the consequences follow
by themselves. So I keep quiet and wait.

SECOND MEMORY

Read at the Academy of Sciences in the Session of October 17, 1853.

By T. TIFFEREAU.

Metals are compound bodies.

In order to remove any doubts which may remain in your minds concerning the discovery which
I have made, of artificial gold, I will enter into some details due to my experiments, to prove that,
in the circumstances in which I have operated on, I could not take illusions for realities.

Gentlemen, distinct from the others by its chemical properties, which are entirely characteristic, as we know, and which therefore do not allow it to be confused with any other; for this very reason,
it is easy to obtain it chemically pure; so that acting on this metal, I could
perfectly realize the partial or complete changes that the chemical agents that I used could bring about.

In my first attempts, I was able to convince myself that a very small quantity of money passed to Fêtât
d'or, but in such a small quantity that I initially doubted the success of the fact although I was nevertheless very convinced that the The silver I used did not contain the slightest quantity of gold.

If I only had this result to show, one could doubt and say that the silver used was not
chemically pure: that moreover silver always contains gold and that there is therefore no no
wonder I found some I would still admit that silver could contain traces of gold;
but what I cannot admit is that there could be an illusion on my part. when, in several
other capital experiences that I made, I saw all the silver used change its appearance and properties
; the metal which, before the experiment, was entirely soluble in azotic acid, became
completely insoluble in this reagent; on the contrary, it has become completely soluble in aqua
regia and alkaline sulphides; in a word it has acquired all the chemical and physical properties of
gold; all silver has turned into gold. I will add that I operated on large enough quantities,
as I said in my previous memoir, so that I could have no doubt about the
accomplished fact; I followed with attention all the phases of these experiments which were very long,
and if I cannot always repeat them with the same success, the capital fact of the transformation of
silver into gold does not exist. less.

I have the honor of putting before the eyes of the Academy a small part of this first gold as I obtained it; it is easy to convince yourself that this product has its particular character which distinguishes it from mine gold, from that of placer and that of gold-bearing sands: when it is melted, it is impossible to. Distinguish it from natural gold, perfectly identical with it.

I have the honor of placing before the eyes of the Academy a small ingot of this molten gold.

the sealed package that I deposited at the Academy, I delivered in escrow samples of my
artificial gold and your detailed description of the processes that I used to obtain it.

In the course of the operations of which I have just spoken, and which I varied in all forms, I
noticed striking analogies in the phenomenon of the transformation of the various metals on
which I operated; and, without going into unnecessary details here, I believe I can conclude from my
experiments that the transformation of copper into silver has been demonstrated to me and will soon be a fact acquired by science; than other metals, such as iron, for example. can be transformed into copper,
silver, gold.

Now I must obtain artificial gold on a large scale; It is this process that I am looking for, for
which I lack the means.

This admission of powerlessness will not surprise the Academy: it is consistent with all the precedents of the inventors who preceded me; none of them, as far as I know, perfected their invention with their
own means, and too often they lost the fruit, exhausted as they were by the expenses
they had made, or discouraged by unbelief. and public carelessness.

As for the consequences of the transformation of silver into gold, the production of artificial gold, I
leave it to the wisdom of the Academy to foresee all the disruptions and advantages they may bring in the commercial relations of peoples, in our financial system, in your respective values ​​of land products and industry.

In publishing here the fact of my discovery, my aim is less to gain honor or profit from it, than
to enrich science and benefit my country.

Instrument of Providence which has guided my trials, I obey the impulse which pushes me, and come to
ask advice and support from the first body of the world.

I limit myself here, gentlemen, to these reflections, asking the Academy to honor with its attention the
communication that I have just made to it, and to grant me this moral encouragement which every
inventor needs to perfect his work.

I will now respond to some objections that have been made to me regarding my first
memoir. Some say to me ironically: "Since you have produced a lot, why don't you first
produce a few kilograms, then quintals, then finally tons, and you will become the first potentate in the world: you will be able to dethrone the Emperor of Russia; your discovery is worth more than the sword of the great Frederick; IF I WAS YOU, I WOULD KEEP QUIET. »

I will answer this with facts known to all. Why didn't Fulton immediately manage to
advantageously apply the motive power of steam to your navigation? Why was he obliged
to ask for the assistance and money of sovereigns to perfect his work and apply it on a
grand scale. How many years did he devote to his discovery? Why didn't he limit his first
efforts to a machine operating on a small scale?

Why did the French engineer Lebon, who discovered lighting gas, why Leblanc, who
discovered artificial soda, not take advantage of their immortal discoveries? Didn't Lebon
die in poverty? And yet today the companies that exploit his discovery
are making colossal fortunes. Was Leblanc enriched by his work?

When Lavoisier discovered oxygen, to obtain this gas, in principle, the operation
was very long and very expensive; today it is one of the simplest operations in
chemistry: instead of one process, we have several which provide this gas at very little cost, witness,
among others, that of Mr. Boussingault, who It is, in reality, only a matter of fuel, since
the same body can constantly supply oxygen. And who tells us that this will not be the case with
the transmutation of metals?

To finish with this list. which I could extend, I will cite the beautiful discovery of
MM. Daguerre and Niepce: how much time, how much expense and care has it cost them?

Why didn't we tell these gentlemen to continue to perfect their processes? Isn't that what
a few silver plates, a few grams of iodine, bromine and mercury cost? Isn't there
enough to generate thousands of experiences? Did they not sell their
discovery to the government, imperfect as it was then?

From that moment on it was used and still serves. enrich those who exploit it by continuing to
perfect it.

Likewise, I am convinced that the discovery of artificial gold will be a source of immense wealth for those who can exploit it, and will provide real services of incalculable scope
to science, industry and the arts.
.
Other people have told me (and that's why I'm talking about it here): "Your discovery will be like the
artificial production of precious stones, which cost more than those found in nature."

This objection, gentlemen, is without value; because,
artificial productions, given that the majority of natural precious stones have little
value, on the contrary they acquire much through the art of cutting; that, most often,
labor costs more than the price of the raw material. It is the same with artificial stones,
and again these stones are only used as luxury objects; they have very few
industrial applications.

The artificial production of precious metals, on the contrary, is such that their value
increases very little through work, and they are also used daily and considerably,
as the basis of all industry. by their special properties, which make them more and more
essential to all human work. And what would civilization be, of which we are so proud? What
would the physical sciences themselves be like, without precious metals? There is therefore, as we see
, no possible comparison between the production of precious metals and that of fine stones
, in the dual respect of their consequences and their use as an agent of civilization.

THIRD MEMORY

Presented on May 8, 1854

Metals are compound bodies.

I had requested the honor of reading this third Memoir at the Academy ; for more than three months I
had registered with the secretariat for this purpose. Not knowing exactly when I would be able to obtain
my heavy reading, fearing that I would perhaps have to wait several more weeks, my
health and the time no longer allowing me to attend the sessions, I decided to publish my
work, as I intended to read it at the Academy. I long to have judges
and that we know 4 what to make of my discovery. These considerations make me discern the honor
that I had requested to appear before the Academy, an honor which cannot, after all, add any
additional value to this memoir.

INTRODUCTION

GENTLEMEN,
In my previous communications, I had the honor of announcing to the Academy my discovery
of the means of obtaining gold artificially, of effecting the transformation of silver into gold: I submitted at the Academy, compared with the gold of the placers and for in ingots, the artificial gold that I had obtained.

Many scientists today still consider as chimerical the transmutation of metals announced by a crowd of people, some in bad faith, others duped by their own illusions; I therefore had to suffer the common fate, and the announcement of my discovery met with many incredulous people.

Besides, what weight could be in favor of my assertions, my name totally unknown
in science, when I attested to the possibility of operating the transmutation - The coldness with which
my efforts were received had no reason to surprise me.

Far from complaining about the kind of revulsion and commiseration felt by those who learned
of my discovery, I think I should rather congratulate myself on it: the emotion in his
favor could have been fatal to him; because, although it is perfectly real, it is only based on
operations, on a very small scale, having produced only a few grams of gold. We
would not have failed to be ordered to produce quintals of it. If, as I hope, I manage to
convince the Academy of the reality of my successes, I will have won the double advantage of triumphing over prejudices which, moreover, I understand perfectly, and of proving once again that Providence
, in its inscrutable views, sometimes deigns to use the most humble to accomplish
great things.

Until this day, gentlemen, I had believed I could hope that, supported by public opinion, I
would find, to follow up my work, the assistance of a few enlightened men, jealous
of ensuring with me France the honor and advantages of a discovery of this nature. My
hopes, I must admit today, were vain and illusory; without further delay,
the time has come to establish my right of priority by publishing my processes for the
production of artificial gold.

Thousands of experiments, repeated and varied to infinity, have given birth in me, for several
years, to the conviction that these processes could only benefit from being exposed in broad daylight. After all, it is perhaps not up to me to keep hidden any longer a secret whose disclosure must
call into the production of metals the investigations of scientists, the work of the
eminent chemists for whom France is honored.

These are the reasons which have earned me the honor of appearing before you gentlemen, ready to provide all the proofs of sincerity that the Academy may be pleased to demand from me, ready to operate before its
eyes with the raw materials which she herself will have made available to me.

Finally, before entering into the matter, I must report to the Academy the reasons of expediency which
determine me to make this communication to it at this moment.

fresh from my experiences as the product of my work in photography, I returned to France with
a modest capital, fruit of my savings, to complete my discovery by means of some
precision instruments that I could not obtain in Mexico, and new research
fully confirmed the results obtained by me on this land of precious metals.

Soon I saw my resources diminish, without knowing if they would be enough to give me time
to achieve the goal of my work: I anticipated the moment when I would fail everything at once. I
did not hesitate to sacrifice part of what remained to me to create means of existence; I
found it in the use of certain instruments relating to the physical arts. Unfortunately
these resources are too limited to allow me to lead my discovery to the perfection
it must achieve. I therefore resolve to release it, as it is, to publicity, in
the interest of science and for the honor that must reflect on my country; I put on notice those who
have the means to work on my data and my processes, to enrich the arts and commerce.

It is not without feeling a painful feeling that I adopt this resolution; it would have been sweet for me to walk alone to the goal, to reach it and to pay homage to my century with a success won by
my sole efforts. Regardless, I will nonetheless cordially support with all my power any
attempt made to move forward in the career that I am opening today. For the reality of the great
fact that I am putting forward leaves no doubt in my mind; only I would have liked to offer
my processes to the public only with a degree of greater precision and security: that was where all my
ambition was limited.

But, apart from the primary resources, I miss everything, the stability, the absence of
personal concerns, the ability to follow without distraction and with maturity the complex phenomena of your transmutation of metals. Long experiments on the influence of sunlight have
compromised my organs of sight, fatigue has undermined my health; work of another
order imposed on me by the need to support my family, forces me to admit my powerlessness,
when I have the conviction, the moral certainty of the possibility of future success by operating on a
large scale, if it were given to me to overcome the entirely material causes of this impotence,

I carry out my resolution to make public my procedures for obtaining artificial force. May the Academy
forgive me for daring to talk about it; the feeling of love for science which alone dictates my
approach carries with it its excuse.

FIRST PART

For the enlightened traveler who travels through the Mexican provinces observing with
intelligent attention the mineralogical state of this country, its alluvial soils, its placers and its deposits of precious metals, a fact emerges from this examination that is likely to be discarded. a great day on the natural production of these metals. This fact is the presence, I could say the extreme abundance, of nitrates of potash and soda which appear everywhere on the surface of the ground, and which accumulate in regular crystals in the bed of the descending torrents. mountains ; we even exploit masses
naturally pure enough so that they can be used in the manufacture of mine powder.

We also encounter iodides, bromides and chlorides in notable quantities: pyrites
, another no less important agent, are in perpetual contact with alkaline nitrogenates,
this agent brings its share of certain influence on the production of metals.

These two classes of compound bodies acting under the double influence of light and heat,
give rise to electrical phenomena which result in the decomposition of metalliferous terrains,
and the new combinations from which the metals come.

This way of seeing this theory of the fermentation of metals can be supported or opposed;
I will only say that for me it has a degree of probability which has become the guide and the starting point of my research.

The opinion of transmutation, of the perfectibility of metals, is so generally admitted by the
miners of Mexico, that we should not be surprised to hear them say when speaking of the pieces of ore
which they admit or reject for exploitation; “This is good and MUR. ; this is
bad and has not yet transitioned to the golden state.

In my point of view, the reactions under the influence of which the transformation of metals takes place
constitute a complex phenomenon where the main role belongs to the oxygenated
nitrogen compounds. The action of heat, light and electricity promotes or develops, within certain
limits, the combinations of these compounds with the unknown radical which constitutes the
metals.

gaseous whose other physical states escape our research. Nitrogen seems to act in these
combinations as a ferment would act in the transformations of organic matter under
the influence of this same agent. The fixation of oxygen, its more or less lasting combination with
the radical, under the action of a nitrogen compound: this for me is the key to the transformation of metals.

Whether these theoretical ideas are true or false, exact or erroneous, is what I
will not undertake to discuss here; I think I must limit myself to saying that, without it being possible for me to acquire the mathematical certainty of their reality, their influence governed my experiences;
their probability in my eyes arose from the effects noted during several years of observations. If I
mention it, it is to better understand the path that I followed, and perhaps to shed some
light on the road along which those who follow after me will follow the same order of research.

In any case, I will give a succinct presentation of the results of my observations; their lineage
will allow us to understand by what sequences of facts and ideas I was led to conceive the theory
that I have just summarized.

1° A first fact that everyone can reproduce at will was my starting point. If we reduce
pure silver into filings and let azotic acid, also pure, act on it, certain
particles of this filing will remain insoluble in the acid; they will only disappear after the
dissolution has been left to rest for several days.

2° If pure silver filings are projected into glass tubes of 4 to 5 millimeters in diameter
, 12 to 15 centimeters high, filled to a third of their capacity with azotic acid at 36
degrees, after that this acid will have been, for a certain time, exposed to the action of the sun's rays,
we will see that a certain portion of the silver particles will remain completely insoluble in the acid,
despite the rise in temperature produced by the reaction .

3° If we operate on an alloy of nine tenths of silver and one tenth of copper, the reaction will be
more vigorous and the insolubility of certain parts of the alloy will be the same as in the
previous operation.

4° The phenomenon will recur again, if we operate on the same alloy, out of contact with the
solar rays.

5° In all these experiments, independently of the insolubility of the particles of pure silver or
alloy,

6° By varying these experiments by the use of azotic acid at various degrees of dilution, after
however having exposed it to the action of solar rays for a more or less prolonged time, I was
able to collect plots of metal perfectly insoluble in pure and boiling azotic acid,
soluble on the contrary in chlorine solution.

7° Comparative experiments allowed me to recognize:

1° That gold, introduced in small quantities into the alloy, facilitates the artificial production of this
metal.
2° That pure silver is much more difficult to transform into gold than when it is alloyed
with other metals.
3° That, as I stated in my first memoir, the catalytic force has
something to do with the transmutation of metals.
4° That chlorine, bromine, iodine and sulfur, in the presence of oxygenated nitrogen compounds
, promote the production of precious metals.
5° That the ozonated air seems to activate this production.
6° That the temperature of 25 degrees and above is favorable to the accomplishment of this
phenomenon.
7° That successful results depend largely on the duration of the operations.

On these first observed facts, which were not offered with the same degree of certainty, nor
with perfectly identical characteristics, I based new research having as its
principle the influence of solar light, so intense and so favorable in the beautiful climate of Mexico.
My first success was obtained in Guadalajara. Here are the circumstances:
After having exposed pure azotic acid to the action of the sun's rays for two days, I
projected pure silver filings alloyed with pure copper in the proportion of the alloy currency
. A strong reaction appeared accompanied by a very abundant release of
nitrous gas; then the liquor, left to rest, showed me an abundant deposit of intact filings
agglomerated in mass.

The release of nitrous gas continuing without interruption. I left the liquid to its own devices
for twelve days, I noticed that the aggregated deposit increased significantly in volume.

I then added a little water to the solution without any precipitate being produced, I left
the liquor to rest for five days. During this time, new vapors continued to be released.

These five days having passed, I brought the liquor to the boil and kept it there until the
release of nitrous vapors ceased, The material obtained by desiccation was dry, dull, blackish green; it offered no appearance of crystallization; no saline part had been deposited. Then treating this material with pure and boiling azotic acid for ten hours, I saw the material become a light green without
ceasing to be aggregated into small masses; I added a new quantity of pure and concentrated acid; I
boiled again; It was then that I finally saw the disintegrated material take on the shine of natural gold.

I collected this product and sacrificed a large part of it to submit it to a series of
comparative tests with pure natural gold; it was not possible for me to notice the slightest difference
between the natural gold and the artificial gold that I had just obtained.

My second experience, of the same type as the previous one, was linked to Colima: the phenomena occurred
as in Guadalajara under the influence of solar light, which did not cease to act
throughout the treatment of the alloy by the azotic acid: only, I reduced the
duration of the first treatment to eight days, and the acid that I used was sufficiently diluted with water so that solar action alone could not produce the release of nitrous vapors. Now as these did not cease to emerge, I attributed this fact to an electric current due to the type of fermentation of which
nitrogen seems to me to be the principle. The nitrous gas continued to be released constantly as long as the liquor was not brought to the boil.

I completed this operation like the previous one; nevertheless, in this second experiment,
I used, towards the end of the operation, more concentrated acid, to bring about the disintegration of the
material and to bring it to take the brilliant color of gold.
I made a third experiment on my return to Guadalajara, it was completely successful like the
two previous ones without presenting any extraordinary phenomenon worthy of note: the quantity
of alloy that I had put into the experiment was entirely transformed into pure gold, thus as I said
in my second memoir.

Here, gentlemen, in all its sincerity, is the fact obtained, the constant result that I was able to reproduce several times in Mexico; This fact, I have not succeeded in reproducing it in France, and by acting on more considerable quantities. I doubtless have difficulty appreciating the causes which act in the reactions by virtue of which metals, soluble in azotic acid,
different from those that these same metals possessed before having undergone these reactions.

Should these changes, to which the action of solar light appears to contribute so powerfully, be attributed to a special electrical or magnetic state, or to the role of nitrogen under this influence?

Finally, is there the production of a particular oxide of silver and copper, such as those
presented to us by iron? This is what, until now, I have not been able to verify.

SECOND PART

GENTLEMEN.
After having, as I have just explained, repeated the preceding experiments a large number of times
, always operating under the influence of solar rays without being able to discover what
causes determined or prevented the production of artificial force, when I varied your processes or
that I only made slight changes, I finally wanted to ensure the real effect of the
light by operating outside of this influence. Here is the summary of my attempts in this direction,
attempts crowned with success.

Having mixed twelve parts of concentrated sulfuric acid and two parts of azotic acid at 40 degrees,
I filled with this mixture, up to a quarter of their capacity, glass tubes into which I projected
silver and copper filings, prepared with pure metals, copper making up one tenth of
this alloy. After the first reaction, accompanied by more or less abundant emission of
nitrous gas, depending on the quantity of azotic acid admitted into the mixture, we see the solution take on a beautiful purple tint: we then bring it to a boil, which we maintain for several days,
adding from time to time, as necessary, pure and concentrated sulfuric acid, so as to
drive out all the azotic acid.

This prolonged boiling time is necessary because the two acids form a
very stable combination; as long as this combination remains, gold is not deposited. We can also
notice that after several days of boiling, if we come to. add to. dissolving a little water,
there is still a slight release of nitrous gas, which would indicate that the
highly concentrated sulfuric acid has more affinity for water than for this nitrogenous compound. To get rid of the nitrous vapors, which could still remain there, add a little ammonia sulfate and
boil again.

In these experiments the gold appears dissolved thanks to the nitrous gas, because, as the quantity of
gas becomes lower, cooling, on the walls of the tube on the side where it is inclined; they can be distinguished at simple sight . When the quantity of gold produced is large enough, the metal gathers in mass at the bottom of the tube.

Another means, with a less slow effect, consists of replacing, in the preceding experiment, the
azotic acid, with nitrogenate of potash.

I varied, I repeat, these essays to infinity; except under the influence of accidental circumstances, I have generally observed the same results.

It is up to the Academy to decide on the value of these experiences. I am ready,
as I expressed at the beginning of this dissertation, to operate under the eyes of a commission taken from within the Academy with the reagents which will be provided to me by this commission.
I have meditated a lot on a probable theory which can guide chemists in the operations
aimed at the production of artificial gold. I could expose the strong inductions, the more or less striking analogies, capable of clarifying doubts about the value of the agents to whom I attribute
the production of gold; but I understand the need to be sober in reflection and not to abuse
the indulgence of the Academy. Later, if such work becomes appropriate, I could
develop the ideas that have been awakened in me by the curious facts, objects of my observations, during
fifteen years devoted to experiments on the same subject.

FOURTH MEMORY

Presented to the Academy of Sciences in the session of August 7, 1854

Metals are compound bodies.

My attempts at transmutation of metals had as their starting point the observation of facts. Having
dissolved a small quantity of silver free of traces of gold in perfectly pure nitric acid,
this silver precipitated from its slightly acidic dissolution by pure copper, did not provide me, at the moment when it had just been obtained, no piece of gold; this same precipitate, subjected, after several
months, to the same test method, gave me traces of gold. Other samples of silver precipitated
by various pure metals, obtained a long time ago, tested and labeled: silver free from traces
of gold - also allowed me to note the same result.

I did not know precisely how to attribute this fact, either to a slow transformation of silver into gold, or to the prior presence of particles of gold, either in the silver or in the metals used in the
precipitation. I repeated the same experiments in the following way:

with pure water. I dissolved part of this silver in pure nitric acid and another part
in pure sulfuric acid. The two solutions were diluted with distilled water and then filtered.
The silver, from these two solutions, was precipitated partly by pure copper, partly by an alloy
of copper and zinc, with a little iron: the precipitates washed with distilled water, then subjected to the method of test previously employed, did not provide the slightest sign of the presence of gold.
These various silver precipitates having been exposed for more than eight months to contact with air, then
tested again, I was able to note the presence of gold in all of them, in small quantities, it is true.
but very visible in the sun to plain sight.

The highest proportion of gold was provided by the silver precipitated from its azotic solution, by
means of the alloy of the metals copper, zinc and iron. The azotic solution of silver, precipitated by
copper alone reduced from its chloride by hydrogen, held second place in the production of
gold. The silver precipitated from its dissolution in sulfuric acid gave gold in less quantity,
always operating on the same quantity of raw material and with the same acid used at the
same dose. If we were to judge from the atoms produced in these experiments in a
given time, the time necessary to completely transform silver into the state of gold would be several centuries.

In these tests, I operated on 50 centigrams of precipitate.

I noted the acceleration of the transformation of silver into gold in the silver precipitate obtained
as I indicated above, through which I passed an electric current. I undertook
a new series of experiments in this direction; which will be completed, I will make known the
result.

I cannot urge physicists too strongly to draw their attention to the
important role that electricity is called upon to play in the transmutation of metals. The experiments
cited in my third memoir, especially the one where I projected silver filings into
azotic acid heated in the sun, are they not proof of this? In this experiment, the silver filings
agglomerates en masse within its own solvent, and forms a single whole,
during the entire time it takes for the transformation of the alloy into pure gold.

The material only took on the color of natural gold when it began to disintegrate; the imprint of the file, an easy-to-recognize stamp of authenticity for this artificial gold, can still be seen today. I
challenges every human hand to produce an imitation of it with natural gold; the mysterious forces of
nature passed over this silver filings alloyed with copper: they provided it, as it is
easy to be convinced, with a mode of molecular aggregation different from that of the alloy used
in the 'operation.

This agglomeration, taken and preserved by the filings, can only be due to a
particular electrical or magnetic state, undoubtedly developed by chemical action, assisted by
solar radiation. I propose to make known, in a subsequent work, the effects of solar light
on silver precipitated from its azotic dissolution by pure copper.

What results for me from these experiences is the conviction that by means of the electric fluid used in
one of its various states, the transformation of silver into gold will be carried out very quickly: the maximum speed should only be achieved at a high temperature, in atmospheres with varying degrees
of electricity and heat, but where, however, heat and electricity would always maintain
the same relationship between them; it is in the same way, in fact, that we managed to carry out the precipitation of copper in the state of fusion in a metallic bath by means of iron, as it takes place at
ordinary temperature, by plunging into a solution of copper a stripped iron blade.

Although there remains some uncertainty in the results of my processes, the fact nonetheless remains
. What harms this discovery is that it is in childhood, but didn't all discoveries, even those which shook the world, also have their period of childhood? What does she need to
be accepted? the equivalent of an influential godfather, some high patronage in the world of
applied science. Let her find one, and we will see her develop, grow, and finally bear fruit.

He will not lack perfected processes; we will find him. as we have found for
photography, accelerating substances, thanks to which your transmutation of metals can
take place very quickly.

The process which has been successful for me several times in Mexico will, I have no doubt, receive
improvements under which we will be able to operate without fail. Then this fruitful industry
will achieve everything that sciences, arts and commerce can expect from it.

Why didn't I ask, either to the Academy or to the public, through the newspapers, metals, with the aim of authentically proving that these bodies are composed, that they derive from each other
, that they are constantly perfected in the bosom of the earth, and that the
artificial production of precious metals is perfectly within the order of possible things - This is because I anticipated that this appeal would be without result, that I would not obtain funds, that my time, my efforts and my advances would be a complete waste, and that my efforts would be mocked on top of that.

However, I spent this sum in Mexico to arrive at my discovery;

I only asked for this money from my work. As I said in my first Memoir, a daguerreotype
provided me with the means to carry out my research with my photographic chemist's paraphernalia.
After a success as complete as I could have desired, since I had achieved the
complete transformation of silver into pure gold, without having expected, it is true, such a marvelous result, people refused to believe it. . The metal chosen as the basis of my research produced both the success of the operation and the distrust of the scientific world. Perhaps people would have believed me more easily if I had taken any other metal as the subject of my attempts, iron, for example, and had succeeded in transforming it into pure copper. But when I say that I have made gold, it is, they say, really too good to believe: it is who will throw me away and overwhelm me with outrageous sarcasm. But none of this can discourage me: as the believer persists in faith, I will persist as long as I have
the strength left to work.

When I arrived in Paris, I believed I was following the right path by devoting my savings to perfecting my
discovery. I thought? When I no longer have the means to continue with my own resources,
I will report my work to the Academy, which will undoubtedly hasten to note the facts. This
alone will be enough to make me find the means to continue my experiments. Today the force
of circumstances reduces me to making photographed portraits to survive, while awaiting the report of the
Commission appointed to pronounce on my discovery. My opponents applaud this
decadence and in their eyes it is already proof in their favor against me; but let them
not believe that for this I am abandoning my discovery. I have what they cannot have the conviction of what I support, awareness of the reality of my results;

it gives me alone more strength than all those who deny, without sincerity in their denials, have. The truth will emerge despite All.

Some journalists, reporting on the Academy sessions, deigned to talk about my
discovery. I take the opportunity to sincerely thank them: I especially have to give thanks to Mr.
Victor Meunier, of La Presse, and to the editor of the scientific part of La Lumière, for the words
of encouragement with which they engage the competent men to repeat my experiments. If
I were sufficiently favored by fortune I would say to the partisans of science, to the friends of progress
: Come work with me! Unfortunately, I can only offer them explanations as
precise as they may desire; they will help them enough, I am assured, to
quickly create in them the conviction of the reality of the fact; I don't want anything beyond that; after which they will, I hope, have the strength to progress on their own.

I will say to those who, without being very versed in the physical and chemical sciences, would
nevertheless like to try experiments on the transmutation of metals according to the above data,
that success can also crown their efforts: practice wins, and much, on
theory; practice can always lead to new progress, often to completely
unforeseen and unexpected progress.

We must take money as the basis of the experiments, for the reasons developed in my second
Memoir; we can then vary them in several ways, in order to better understand the
results and not to deviate from the truth. Let us operate with metals that are easy to obtain,
perfectly pure, and repeat comparative experiments frequently, and we will
always be brought back on the right path, should we happen to deviate from it.

I pursued for a long time the search for a very sensitive reagent, making it possible to note the presence
of the smallest particle of gold in silver: an aqua regia, composed of 12 to 13 parts of
pure sulfuric acid and a part of nitric acid, also pure, is the reagent on which I stopped
as the most sensitive of all those that I had the opportunity to try.

Its manipulation is a little long; but it has the advantage of depositing gold with its natural color and
a perfect metallic shine, which allows the slightest particle to be distinguished. It is good to observe that.

when the metals alloyed with silver are in too high a proportion, this reagent is no longer as sensitive; In this case it is appropriate to add a higher dose of azotic acid.

I insist on the necessity, ensure a highly sensitive reagent; this is such a crucial point that often, failing to be able to realize the minimal results due to the action of chemical or other agents, we
reject a process that is good in itself, of which: it does not have was possible to fully appreciate the value, while perhaps we were approaching the desired result.

I am attaching here the list of objects which make up the material necessary for the
transmutation experiments. This material is not very considerable. You must have two stoves, one hand-operated.

the other with a street lamp; some retorts and earthen crucibles; tubes closed at one end, with a
support; a filter holder, funnels, a few glass retorts, porcelain capsules:
experimental glasses, an alcohol lamp. In terms of chemicals, you need
pure sulfuric, nitric and hydrochloric acids, pure potassium nitrate, manganese peroxide,
potassium chlorate, ammonia nitrate, distilled water; metals, silver, copper, iron and
zinc, as perfectly pure as possible.

We see, I reserve nothing for myself, I open the way wide to those who want to walk there with
me, but, in the presence of my deep convictions, when the transmutation of metals, accepted
in practice, can react with such energy on the destiny of France, raising my voice to
proclaim my discovery and have it accepted, it is more than my interest, it is my duty.

FIFTH MEMORY

Presented to the Academy of Sciences in the session of October 16, 1854

On the transmutation of metals.

SUMMARY

1° Of the transmutation of alloyed silver into gold.
2° Experiments carried out at the Imperial Mint in Paris.
3° The difficulty of bringing materials to a chemically pure state.
4° The demonetization of gold and silver.
In my previous communications, I explained how, when filings of pure silver or alloyed with copper are thrown into pure nitric acid, a more or less abundant black deposit is always formed
, in which, most of the time, we in no way recognize the appearance of gold,
especially when the production of this metal is too minimal to make it possible to distinguish the atoms
of artificial gold produced. So that there can be no doubt left in the mind of the operator,
carefully decant the clear part, then add pure sulfuric acid into the tube,
ten to twelve times the volume of the remaining liquid; by heating, the black deposit and the liquor completely disappear becomes perfectly clear. Maintain the tube for at least thirty-six hours in a
sand bath at a temperature of approximately 300 degrees; heat for longer rather than less; gold is not always deposited, although it exists in the liquor, a double salt of silver and tris stable gold
is undoubtedly formed , which is produced in the presence of the two acids sulfuric and nitric,
and prevents gold from settling. This, it seems to me, is what can explain how in two
experiments carried out on the same silver, under the same circumstances, with the same acids, one
gives gold, while the other does not. not. Is this effect due to the presence of
nitrogen oxygen compounds remaining in the sulfuric acid. This is what I find difficult to believe, having observed several times that the deposition of gold took place while there was still nitrous gas in the acid.

I observed that the narrower the tubes, the more complete the decantation of the nitrate, the more
easily the deposition of gold takes place; the metal films all collect at the bottom of the tube; while if
silver sulfate crystals were deposited in the liquor, these would divide the gold, the
presence of which would no longer be as appreciable... We can see that the deposit of gold from these two acids is also a complex phenomenon which requires careful study, in order to account for the
circumstances which sometimes prevent it from occurring.

When you are not too pressed for time, you should always allow an interval of
several days to elapse between the first operation and the rest, taking care to maintain the tubes at a
temperature of 50 to 60 degrees. If time permits, expose the tubes to solar radiation, after
which, decant the clear part of the silver nitrate without boiling; the residue will then be treated
with sulfuric acid, as mentioned above. When the tubes are heated, nitrous vapors are released
which continue to be produced until the nitric acid has completely decomposed; the liquor retains, as long as it is hot, a faint yellowish tint which it loses as it cools.

Continuing my transmutation experiments, I observed, which could be expected from
my first results, that by dissolving several times in pure nitric acid the same
silver alloyed with copper (these two metals being free from 'gold) and each time precipitating the silver from its dissolution by the same copper, note the presence of gold in silver alloyed with copper. If we melt the silver each time, the quantity of gold produced will be greater: which would again seem to indicate that certain parts of silver change molecular state while passing through these temperature variations, and that these parts modified, are more capable of transitioning to the gold state in the presence of oxygenated nitrogen compounds.

It has been objected to me that gold comes from copper used in the precipitation of silver; I tried this same copper, in a quantity greater than that used in these successive precipitations, without having been able to obtain the slightest traces of gold. (I have undertaken new experiments with the aim of overcoming
these objections: as soon as they are completed, I will report them to the Academy). I wonder
why the presence of copper would not make it easier for silver to pass in whole or in
part to a different molecular state, which, under certain influences, for example under those of the
oxygenated compounds of nitrogen, would favor the fixing the oxygen in these parts,
giving them a molecular state similar to that of gold, with the properties of this metal? Why would
this fixation of oxygen, if it really takes place, not occur in a manner opposite to that which
occurs in silver tests by cupellation, at the moment when this
curious phenomenon is accomplished we call lightning ' The interesting work I M. Levol on this subject, cannot leave, it seems to me, any doubt on this fact, that silver, at a high temperature, gives up to copper the oxygen which it is absorbed into the air at the moment when the temperature drops and the silver passes into the solid state. Why, I ask, would not an opposite effect take place - Does chemistry not offer examples of similar reactions? I have also observed that the presence of iron, in small quantities, facilitates the production gold.

Experiments carried out at the Monnaie Impérialle Paris, in the presence of Mr. LEVOL assayer.
1st session, started at half past one and finished at three o'clock. Two silver alloys
free of gold were supplied by Mr. Levol, one at 900 thousandths, the other at 850 thousandths: a part
of each alloy was reduced to filings, then passed to the magnet: two centigrams of each
filing were projected into nitric acid at 40 degrees, previously poured into the tubes.
Some parts of filings only dissolved after prolonged boiling:

to distinguish the gold produced; the deposit has been attributed to coal, iron and other impurities. In
my opinion, this deposit must have contained gold. This experiment was not taken further. The remainder of
each alloy was treated separately with the same acid; the one in which a little iron entered
which did not alloy, formed a deposit which prevented us from recognizing whether there really was
production of gold; the other alloy gave a weak deposit of gold. According to Mr. Levot's expression, these are millionths of a milligram. Mr. Levol claims that this gold comes from silver which was not
pure; I think it was produced in the reaction.

2nd session started at two o'clock, ended at four o'clock. Three samples of silver, including one
provided by Mr. Levol and two provided by me, were used for these experiments; I reduced into filings
four to five decigrams of each alloy, which was divided into two approximately equal parts.
Only a portion of each of the filings was passed through the magnet, then they were introduced
into separate and labeled tubes;

I poured pure nitric acid at 40 degrees over the filings ; the acid was brought to the boil in order to activate the reaction and shorten the duration of the operation.

As in the first session, the formation of a black deposit in all the tubes was noted.

In order to make visible the presence of the artificial gold atoms produced in these reactions, I decanted
the clear part: the acid being too concentrated, the decantation was difficult because of the
formation of silver nitrate crystals. ; it was defective especially on narrow tubes; then,
I poured pure sulfuric acid into the tubes on the black deposit which dissolved completely. The
tubes had to be placed in a sand bath and brought to a temperature of 300 and a few
degrees; in the absence of a sand bath, the tubes were put in a: crucible filled with sand and placed
near the opening of the cup furnace: your tubes remained there until the next day at 10 o'clock;
the fire not having been maintained, the temperature only decreased. The tubes visited yielded
no trace of gold. I recognized at first glance that the temperature had not been high enough,
that consequently the gold could not be deposited, since it was kept in solution by
the nitric acid existing in the liquor.

I took the two large tubes containing the same silver filings; the acid was brought to the boil; it immediately released nitrous vapors. After
prolonged boiling for nearly two hours, gold was deposited in one of the tubes,
the other did not provide any traces; the boiling in this last tube had not been as regular
as in the other. There were jolts and splashes of acid from the tube; It may be
that the precipitated gold was carried away with the acid which escaped outside.
As I observed in my Memoirs, the results of my experiments are not
always identical, even though they operate with the same materials and under the influence of
identical circumstances.

Before leaving the Mint, I had started a third experiment on the deposit which. was
formed in the liquor containing the decantations of the six tubes. This deposit was treated as in
the others, tubes by sulfuric acid brought immediately to the boil and kept boiling
for several hours. The next day, when I arrived at the Mint, I was told that the tube was
broken; the acid was indeed flowing down the outer walls of the tube: but after careful examination
, I recognized that the tube was really not broken and that the acid could only come from
the jolts which had thrown it out. I noticed in the tube faint atoms of gold barely
visible to your simple sight; but there is nothing to prove that, this time again, most of the gold
was not projected out of the tube.

Mr. Levol then said to me: You see that there is really no gold produced in appreciable quantities.
I recognize, I told him, that the gold deposited is not in as great a quantity as it should have been, which I attribute to the manner in which the tubes were heated. I then asked Mr. Levol to heat
the four remaining tubes in a sand bath, in order to operate in the same circumstances as those
in which I operate at Grenelle. Mr. Levol replied to me: We have had enough, we know what to expect
; When you have safer processes, and you produce appreciable quantities of gold, come and find me. But if I were there, I wouldn't need any more encouragement.

What I am seeking are precisely the means to be able to continue my experiments and
perfect my discovery. I will only point out here that, when we operate on two
decigrams of matter, it is very difficult to have appreciable quantities of gold; what I wanted
to see was that with chemically pure silver, I could produce gold.

In summary, it seems to me that it has been observed:

1° That certain parts of silver filings remain unaffected in nitric acid, that they
only dissolve after a certain boiling time.
2° That a black deposit is constantly formed, more or less abundant.
3° That this black deposit is entirely soluble in the mixture of the two nitric and
sulfuric acids.
4° That the mixture of these two acids dissolves gold as an experiment carried out on a
piece of pure gold observed; in my opinion there is dissolution of the gold, and not disintegration of the
metal.
5° That the gold is only deposited after prolonged boiling and an abundant release of
nitrous vapors.
6° Finally, that the gold is deposited in excessively thin films, with the brilliance of the
purest metallic gold.
7° As for the capital fact, it is not for me to decide: I think I must abstain.

Mr. Levol having told me that there was no need to make a report on these experiences, I decided
to recall them here, in order to clarify in this regard the judgment of people aware of my work
and those to whom these experiences had been announced. What I regret infinitely is that
Mr. Levol did not have enough time available to continue and repeat these experiences which, after
all, were very costly for me through the loss of my time and my travel, since my
only means of existence is the product of my work. However, I did not hesitate for a moment
about the sacrifices that these experiences would impose on me. It was a great disappointment for me
to see that they neither wanted to continue them nor allow me to finish those that had been started
; where I thought I would find help and protection, I only had the bitterest disappointment; I was
given the cruelest refusal to accept.

We begin by finding that it is difficult, if not impossible, to prepare chemically pure silver
; which is quite otherwise impossible for other metals, copper, iron, zinc, etc. The reason for this
is very simple: to obtain them pure, we use the reagents which act on them by modifying
their molecular state, in a more or less restricted ratio, according to circumstances
unappreciable until now, and which constitute the chance of the operations; these parts thus
modified are capable of passing a higher state of unalterability in the presence of oxidizing agents, the
same will apply to all metals, if we seek to have them in a state of perfect purity. It is
a study to be made than to seek the causes which thus modify the properties of bodies, in order to
prevent these molecular alterations from occurring, and to obtain chemically pure metals
; otherwise it will never be possible to get there. It is, it seems to me, during the passage of a
body through these various states of oxides, that certain parts of these metals are completely modified
(especially in the presence of solar light), but in quantities so small that they are not
yet appreciable by our means of investigation. It is up to us to keep ourselves on our guard, in order to
grasp the cause of these variations in order to continue or stop them as we wish. This point obtained, your transmutation of metals will become a most important art.

According to our way of considering metals, they must be formed only of hydrogen,
combined in various ways and in various proportions with oxygen; these combinations
will form all the metals that exist and can exist, which will be more or less
alterable or oxidizable depending on whether they contain a greater quantity of hydrogen, and all the
less alterable as they contain a greater quantity of hydrogen. oxygen. Thus, according to these data
on this class of bodies, it will be enough to make a metal perfect to make it absorb, under certain
conditions; oxygen or remove hydrogen, and vice versa; to make it less
perfect, it will only be necessary to remove oxygen from it, or make it absorb hydrogen.

The primitive pure metal would therefore be hydrogen, unalterable in its properties; we only
know it in the gaseous state; we have not yet been able to solidify it, which would undoubtedly have
enlightened us on its nature. Water would therefore be a particular liquid metal oxide, different from the others which are solid, just as we have a liquid metal, mercury, while all the others
are more or less solid; there can be nothing strange in this way of seeing, which
could, after all, be supported by many other facts more conclusive than the two states
of being of these bodies at ordinary temperature.

The work of the famous Van Mons on this subject, published in Louvain in 1825, shows that men
of science have already considered the question of metals from the same point of view. The metals which
must contain the most hydrogen will be ammonium, potassium, sodium, etc., and those of
the same series which must contain the least compared to oxygen will be platinum, gold,
money, etc. This is what is indicated in some way by their density, their little affinity for
oxygen, their alterability in the presence of the alkaline oxides of the first metals which, on the contrary, have a low density and a great avidity for oxygen. 'oxygen.

I recognize the insufficiency of the facts to properly establish this theory of metals,
since I have not yet succeeded in extracting oxygen from any metal, from gold for
example, which would have brought it back to the state of silver or other metal. Unfortunately I lack the apparatus to attempt experiments for this purpose; it is perhaps not given to science to achieve this
; but, at least, I would have liked to have the satisfaction of having, through sufficiently conclusive tests, opened the way to new research of incalculable significance.

Allow me to add here a few words on the probable consequences of this discovery
with regard to our interests, and the abolition of our gold and silver currency. Metals
being recognized as compound bodies, deriving from each other, the production of artificial gold
noted, our gold and silver currency can no longer be maintained; sooner or later. it will have to
disappear from our commercial relations, to become a commodity, like all the other
products of human industry.

There are also very plausible reasons to believe that this must be the case in the very
near future; for the moment the abolition of gold as currency seems imminent; in the current state
of things this is what can be predicted just by the abundant production of the gold mines of
California and Australia alone, which continue to pour gold excessively into
circulation .

The production of silver is no longer related either to the price of gold, or to the extraction costs, which almost always remain the same, for silver mines, because the silver veins are
of a more uniform production than the gold veins, which can hardly be followed successfully
, the gold being found only from place to place scattered in the ground, at a shallow depth below the surface of the earth. This is what takes place in the mines and especially in the placers,
which supply the majority of our gold, which puts the extraction of this Metal within the
reach of all purses, in a word, of all hardworking man; moreover this metal is found in
the native state, it is sold as it is extracted from the bosom of the earth.

For the extraction of silver, on the contrary, the conditions are very different. These mines are not
most of the time productive only at depths of 100 to 200 meters; several are exploited at
more than 500 meters depth; the exhaustion of water requires the use of powerful machines: moreover
, this metal is not pure, it must be purified, which still requires long and costly labor
. A large advance of capital is, as we see, necessary to exploit the silver mines, which considerably restricts the extraction of this very widespread metal, moreover, but little
exploited. One would be truly astonished at the number of silver mines declared only in Mexico
in a 50-year interval; I could name 50,000 of which only a very small number
are exploited. These facts explain how the production of the two precious metals cannot
maintain an approximately constant ratio, in the presence of the exploitation of new gold deposits
recently discovered in several parts of the world, and we will probably discover many more
. 'others. In whatever place they occur, as soon as they are known they will be exploited, and
their exploitation could take on a considerable extension in a short time. Also for a
long time the respective value of the two precious metals has no longer been in the ratio which was
attributed to them in principle. We understand how the extraction of gold must end up being detrimental to
the gold currency which always retains the same value, without regard to the cost price. It is, it is
true, the means of stimulating the extraction of this metal; it is a strong bonus that all
governments grant it; but this state of affairs is not stable, it can and must vary from one
moment to the next. Let's see where this can lead in terms of our personal interests; From now on, don't
we see the abundance of gold on our markets increasing every day, to the detriment of
the money which disappears from our commercial relations?

Let us suppose that France's neighboring states suddenly remove gold as currency
from their commercial relations, and no longer admit it except as a commodity with a
variable price; This is what the far-sighted Hollande has already done: in this case we should expect a
considerable drop in this metal which, having little consumption in industry, would only have a
strong outlet . restricted. Let us judge the disturbance thrown into the monetary situation among the
nations which possess the most gold, and who would not have taken the initiative in abolishing gold currency.

It seems to me enough to draw the attention of the competent men of my country to this subject, to
let them think of the most suitable measures to take in the interest of the nation.
Assuming that we withdraw gold from monetary circulation, which cannot take long, we will
still have done nothing other than reduce the evil, but it will always remain as long as we do not
entirely eliminate the use of gold. two precious metals as monetary representation of; values.
Since we have succeeded in producing gold artificially, we must also expect that
from one day to the next, we will produce silver, and this in an advantageous way, it There's no
doubt about it. As soon as these discoveries are recognized and published, the extraction of precious metals is too costly for it not to be promptly abandoned and abandoned to be
replaced by the new industry of transmutation of base metals into precious metals,
which will allow copper to pass into the state of silver and gold.

It will not take long for this industry to become flourishing, as long as active and enlightened men
have the courage to get started, without being stopped by your fear of being treated
as alchemists and insane. Then this art will really begin to progress; the lure of profit
that this industry will offer for a long time will cause people to get to work on all sides. It will no longer be necessary to go abroad to obtain these metals; but at home, within one's family, one
will be able to engage in these works which will become a source of well-being for humanity; it will no
longer be necessary to ruin one's temperament to extract from the heart of the earth these metals which are so rare compared to others which are found everywhere in abundance; As they say, you just have to
bend down to get some.

The abolition of silver, as currency, cannot fail to follow that of gold, without counting
here on the transmutation of metals, still regarded by the public as an illusion; but the
incessant progress that chemistry makes every day, teaches how to purify, how to obtain in the free state
precious metals with properties, which can be obtained at prices lower than those of
precious metals strictly speaking. These new metals could be advantageously combined with
silver; it will be very difficult to recognize the fraud, the forger would not, after all, be the only one
guilty. It will be better, I think, to eliminate silver currency in due time, and only keep it
as small change, to facilitate exchanges, than a more suitable alloy than that of billon. The other two metals, silver and gold, would be replaced by paper money which
I will call mortgage paper, because it must represent a property like the bank note
represents an ingot of gold or silver.

I end this presentation here: it will be enough, I think, for the moment, to make us understand the seriousness of the question of the artificial production of precious metals.

As you can see, I am speaking here against my own interests; because the suppression of gold, as currency,
will take away a lot of prestige and value from my discovery; the general interest, it seems to me, must
come before personal interest; My only goal is to benefit my country and
science from my work.

SIXTH MEMORY

Presented to the Academy of Sciences on December 25, 1854.

On the Transmutation of Metals

The following experience must serve as a basis for the reality of the discovery of the artificial production of gold. Dissolve a new five-franc coin in pure nitric acid, although this coin
is supposed not to contain gold. It still contains traces of it; you will find more than it
actually contained. This is because the gold produced in this reaction is added to the gold
previously existing in the room; in this operation, the gold is deposited in small reddish brown flakes
which swim in the liquor; spread it with distilled water then filter this same solution
several times in succession, in order to extract all the gold, precipitate the silver with pure copper, reduced from its chloride by hydrogen or by purified sea salt; in this case, wash the chloride with pure water, then with chlorine water; then reduce the chloride with chalk and charcoal, or even with
hydrogen gas; melt this silver and convert it into shot, dissolving it in pure nitric acid
, you will have a deposit of gold, whatever the means you have used. Filter this solution again
after having diluted it with distilled water, separate it from the product: continue this
operation as said above, you will still have gold: repeat it, even several times in a
row, you will always have gold in quantities that are more appreciable as you operate on larger
quantities of material.

It will be objected to me that gold is provided by copper or sea salt, or chalk and coal, or the water
in which silver is gritted. But then please show me a way to obtain chemically pure silver. If you cannot obtain this metal free of all traces of gold, in these reactions; but do not deny the possibility of the fact that would do harm to your knowledge. It is true that in the above experiments we obtain minimal quantities of gold which are not always in proportion to the quantity of silver used; I hope to provide
an explanation before long.

An analysis which should interest science from the point of view of the transmutation of metals is that
which was carried out by Duke Maximilien de Leuchtemberg (Millon and Reiset, Annuaire de Chimie,
1818, page 81) on the black precipitate which is formed when copper nitrate is decomposed by
voltaic electricity, and commercial copper is used to form the two poles. Little by little, a black powder, long regarded as impure copper oxide, is produced at the positive pole;
this powder gave the following metals when analyzed:

Antimony 9.22 Iron 0.30 Tin 33.50
Nickel 2.26 Arsenic 7.40 Cobalt 0.86
Platinum 0.44 Vanadium 0.64 Gold 0.98
Sulfur 2 .24 Silver 4.54 Selenium 1.27
Lead 15.00 Oxygen 24.84 Copper 9.24
Sand 1.90

It would be useful to repeat this experiment using copper as pure as possible; this metal
would be dissolved in pure nitric acid and then the copper nitrate would be subjected to. the action of the battery: the precipitate which would form being carefully analyzed, we would see if we really only found copper oxide; otherwise it would be necessary to start the experiment again on this same copper
thus purified a second time, to form copper nitrate again, then to subject it to the action
of the battery. If new metals always result in an approximately constant proportion, we
would have to admit the formation of these metals during the operation. We must also, by
comparison, treat an equal quantity of the same copper with pure sulfuric acid, and examine whether the
products obtained are the same, etc. As soon as time allows, I intend to repeat this
experiment, because electricity, I am convinced, plays a powerful role in these metamorphoses.

From the transmutation of metals from the point of view of Geology.

Metals, in the bosom of the earth, are never found alone; they are always associated several
together and form, so to speak, families whose individuals have all the more resemblance
, analogy, common physical and chemical properties, the closer they are to
relatives. This is, in fact, what must be if, as is claimed,
superior inalterability. Likewise they cannot exist alone; for example, potassium and
sodium, which have a great analogy of properties, are they not always found together in
very different proportions? They ally themselves in all proportion; they substitute for each other in
compounds; sodium must only be a derivative of potassium. Nickel and cobalt, for
example, must also be very close relatives.

Iron, copper, silver and gold are metals which, according to me, derive from each other; These
metals were the main object of my research: I did not choose them at random, but rather
according to their order of conductivity for heat, as they are classified by M. Despretz. This
order also corresponds with that of their hardness; iron is harder than copper, copper harder
than silver, silver harder than gold, gold harder than platinum.

Platinum should therefore follow gold: this is what experience will later teach us; their density is
far from being in the same ratio, which would suppose a
different mode of molecular aggregation for each of these metals. We cannot affirm that
the densities of the metals, as obtained, are in the same ratio. I think that to
have the true density ratio that really exists between the different metals, it would be necessary
to be able to obtain them all at the same degree of purity, under the same conditions of electricity and
heat. For example, getting them all crystallized by a weak voltaic current, in equally concentrated liquors and at the same temperature. We would then take their density as it would be
in the metals thus obtained: the work hardening and hammering that we subject the metals to
more or less alter their molecular state. Thus, the crystallized gold found in its native state has a
much lower density than molten gold. I think that if all the metals we know
were all obtained at the same degree of purity, it would be easy, a priori, to classify them according to their order of generation, based mainly on their physical properties.

M. Dufrénoy (Minéralogie de Dufrénoy, T III, p. 199) says, speaking of native gold: “The crystals
are numerous and varied. They all derive from the cube. The most abundant are octahedrons and dodecahedra
. They are rarely isolated: sometimes these crystals are grouped in the form of
branches, as I indicated for copper and silver.

they are generally rounded, even for samples extracted from veins and which, therefore,
have not undergone any friction. This arrangement is common to several native metals and the
edges of the crystals are rounded like those of native silver." These observations further support
my way of considering the molecular changes that metals undergo in
their different metamorphoses We know, in practice, that where we find gold mines, silver mines are not
far away, and that gold always contains silver or copper, this is because , in nature, the
transformations never take place completely: there always remain atoms of the last
metal, which undoubtedly serves as a ferment or which acts by its presence by facilitating the passage of the new metal to another higher state of inalterability. But the opposite must not always take place; where we encounter silver, it may well happen that this silver does not contain gold; gold deriving
from silver, this transmutation can very well although it has not yet begun, due to
circumstances that we are not yet able to appreciate. This is, in fact, what practice
teaches us. The silver which contains the most gold in the mines is always closest to the surface of the
earth; as these mines become deeper and deeper they provide less and less appreciable quantities of gold, and end up not even containing any at all.

Gold is only found, as I said in my last Memoir, at a shallow depth in the heart
of your earth; there are only rare exceptions; where gold has been found at great depths, these
are only fortuitous cases which must only come from accidental causes.

From the fact that gold is only found at a shallow depth below the surface of the earth, we must therefore
conclude that the external agents of the atmosphere are essential for the transformation of
silver into gold. Is water, this powerful solvent of nature, this mineralizer that I will call
par excellence, which would carry in its bosom the elements of the transmutation of metals which,
constantly renewing itself, would continually carry the nourishment proper to all individuals? of this
large family, the elements of atmospheric air to the different metals that it encounters on its
path together with the different salts that it dissolves.

By seeping into the rocks, combined in various ways with metalloids, in the presence of voltaic or
magnetic currents and under the influence of masses, to determine the transmutation of metals into each other, and would give rise in these same circumstances to the transformation of silver into gold.
During my visit to Saint-Ignacio, near Culiacan I examined a new
silver sulfide mine that had just been discovered, where certain parts of the silver sulfide were reddish and disintegrated with the appearance of rust. Mexican miners call this
particular substance QUIJA DE ORO. Near Cozala, Mr. Gonzalez's silver mine contains a lot of gold;
it is shallow and is located in the vicinity of sulphurous springs.

Sulfur and air, like most metalloids, must certainly have a powerful influence on
these metamorphoses. Gold is therefore produced by the oxidation of different silver salts, in contact with atmospheric air dissolved in water, together with the different sets that it dissolves, in the
presence of developed electric currents, undoubtedly, by faction of these sets on top of each other.

Klaproth, under the name electrum, designated a native alloy of gold and silver (Minéralogie de
Dufrénoy, vol. III, p. 202): “We see,” says Dufrénoy, “lamellae which represent the yellow color of
the "gold, while others are of a yellowish white: so that by choosing the parts different
in color, we would obtain very varied compositions." Is this not another one of those facts
that nature shows us as an example of the transformation of silver into gold?

How
can we conceive and explain the formation of these very varied alloys of these two metals in the same
ore, if not by the transition from silver to the state of gold because certain strips were closer
to the generating current? which I call electric current, which favored in certain blades
the passage of a greater quantity of silver into the state of gold, while the others, being further away
or receiving only a smaller portion of the current, produced at the same time
increasingly smaller quantities of gold.

Mr. Dufrénoy says again, on the same page: “The numerous analyzes which have been made of the gold ores
of South America, by Mr. Boussingault, and of the ores of Russia by Mr. Gustave Rosé,
show that silver and gold replace each other in all proportion, even in crystals: "and he
adds: “This result is natural and should have been expected, these two metals being isomorphic. "

According to the analyzes mentioned above, Mr. Dufrénoy observes "that the proportions of silver
are very variable, the average is approximately 8 per 100 for ores from Siberia, it rises to 14
per 100 for those from 'South America, which establishes a remarkable difference between the
gold ores of the old and the new world, although the deposits are in absolutely the
same conditions."

If it is indeed the air, as I I stated above, which produces the transformation of
silver into gold, it would therefore be permissible to admit, from this point of view, that the new world appeared above the waters much later than ours: assuming that the passage from silver to the state of gold
takes place gradually as quickly in the old as in the new world, we can assign to
these parts of continents the respective times of their uprising; this is what that later
geologists will be able to determine and verify whether these data are related to the chronological state
of the partial uprisings of the world.

SECOND PART
FIRST MEMORY

The second part of my work aims to research the causes which govern the
metamorphoses of metallic bodies into each other as we see, the problem to be
solved is very difficult. Despite the results I have reached so far, I do not claim
to resolve it completely; I only aspire to discover some of the causes
which most powerfully influence these different bodies, and which lead them to modify their
molecular state by passing from an inferior state to a superior state of inalterability. If I succeed in taking this part of the metallurgical science of transmutations one step further, I will find myself
sufficiently rewarded.

You will perhaps find that it is great temerity on my part to want to persevere in pursuing
this research, when I lack too many elements at the same time, time, devices and books that I do not have
the leisure to go to. consult in libraries. I expose myself to repeating experiences that
may have already been done; in this case they could have served me and guided me in the experiences that I
am pursuing from a different point of view. This is one more obstacle to my research; despite this, I
will no less continue my work, because I am firmly and deeply convinced.

I made gold, I still make it every day, in very limited quantities, it is true, by
expensive means.

industrial to make gold, a process falling within the conditions of large industry, like
we make glass or bronze, like Mr. Deville is going to make aluminum one of these days.
I do not have to tell my readers about my personal position; I will limit myself simply to
exposing my experiments and the results I arrived at, expressing all my regrets that
these experiments are not as complete as they should be, as they would be if
I had been able to use more suitable for this type of research.

Solar light, this complex agent, seems to me to be, as I have already said, one of the
important elements in the work of the metamorphoses of bodies; it must act on matter by its
more or less prolonged action, by communicating to it new electrical and chemical properties by
virtue of which the material molecules can associate in different ways, in different
proportions, following particular molecular arrangements for each of the bodies .

Solar light must also act continually on atmospheric molecules by
fertilizing them, that is to say, by making them capable of serving the perfectibility of all living and inanimate Beings. Doesn't solar light powerfully influence all plant and animal beings,
which it seems to in some way vivify? Likewise it seems to me that it must act without interruption
in the act of metamorphoses of metallic bodies, this is what determined me to undertake my
transmutation experiments under its influence, I think that in addition it facilitates and considerably activates certain chemical reactions. In this second part of my experiments, I
involve solar light with the aim of trying to determine its action in the act of
transmutations, on the one hand by comparing them to experiences carried out sheltered from the influence of the light, on the other by comparing its effects to. those of the electric spark, the voltaic and
magnetic current in these same experiments.

Here is the summary of the questions that this second part will address:
1° What is the prolonged action of solar light on confined dry and humid gases, whether
isolated, mixed or combined with each other?

2° What is the prolonged influence of the electric spark of the current, voltaic and magnetic
on these same gases alone and in the presence of plain moss?

3° What is the prolonged action of solar light on confined dry and humid gases, in
presence of metals alone and alloyed together? Repeat these same experiments away from sunlight
.
4° What is the prolonged action of the voltaic and magnetic current in these same experiments,
by placing the metals in the voltaic circuit?

5° Subject the ores as they are found in the mines to these same experiments.
6° Check the influence of temperature, which certainly must exert very diverse actions
on the progress and results of these different experiments. Suitable apparatus would be required
to enable temperatures to be produced in these transmutation tests which could be
gradually raised while maintaining them at a constant degree throughout the duration of the experiment.

It is through these trial and error operations that we will be able to grasp the suitable temperatures to
arrive with certainty at the results we want to obtain: otherwise we will never have a
sure way to proceed with security.

Caloric is an incalculable force which acts infinitely on matter and which modifies
its state at every moment. This force acts in most cases as sunlight would; also I
think that one can be replaced by the other by applying it properly.

Caloric and electricity are two imponderable agents of incalculable forces which act
continually in the work of the metamorphoses of bodies; it is by the application of these forces
to metals, in the presence of oxygenated nitrogen compounds, that the problems of the
transmutation of metallic bodies into each other will be resolved. My means do not allow me
to undertake all these experiments at once, I will focus mainly on those which were the
basis of my first work.

Most of the experiments that I undertake, to have more scope, should be extended
for a longer time and carried out with all possible care: insufficient time often leads
to negative results which could subsequently have become positive. . So I will not be put off
by these first attempts, even if they are not crowned with the success that I expect.

Here are some of the experiments which I have undertaken at ordinary temperature; they were
extended for more than a year.

1st experiments — I suspended in a one-liter bottle filled with moist oxygen, a piece
of fine silver at a thousand thousandths, using a platinum wire which I fixed with a little gum lacquer
the lower part of the cap with emery: the closed device remained exposed to sunlight: after
six weeks, the silver grit had taken on a slightly yellowish tint in certain parts. These parts continued, with time, to take on a darker and darker shade; after six months, they had acquired a yellowish red tint like iron oxide; during the last six months of the duration of the experiment, the color of the oxide no longer changed. The oxidation did not spread over the entire surface of the shot, some parts of which remained with the luster and shine of silver. This particularity led me to think that the oxidized parts are those which were in contact with the fingers, undoubtedly that the fatty and acidic part which adhered to the silver condensed the oxygen in the parts which it determined oxidation. This oxide, to be reduced by heat, required a higher temperature than ordinary oxide; it went through
black coloring before the silver had regained its natural whiteness.

2nd experiments —I suspended by a means similar to the previous one, in a bottle stoppered with
emery, a small tube closed with a tip containing precipitated fine silver. The experiment lasted the
same time as the previous one without there being any oxidation of the silver which retained
the same shine throughout; I observed that it dissolved more difficult in azotic acid.
3rd and 4th experiments — I repeated the two experiments in nitrous oxide: the
silver shot was suspended as before: it was oxidized in only a few parts
which turned pale yellow and did not darken in color as in the first operation. I
attributed the formation of the oxide to the same cause which had produced the oxidation of silver in
oxygen.

The fine silver precipitated from its acid azotic solution by pure copper, then washed and dried, was
suspended in nitrous oxide;

it has not oxidized in any way, it has retained its original shine throughout . This same silver, treated with nitric acid, dissolved without releasing gas.

5th experiments.— I repeated the preceding experiment in moist nitrogen deutoxide; the silver
dissolved without me being able to distinguish the formation of nitrous gas; the bottle was perhaps poorly
corked, which will have allowed the formation of nitrous gas by the entry of oxygen and subsequently the dissolution of silver.

EXPERIMENTS MADE UNDER THE INFLUENCE OF THE VOLTAIC CURRENT.

1st experiments carried out away from direct sunlight - I suspended by means of a
platinum wire a gram of fine silver shot in a three-tube balloon filled with
moist oxygen; through the two side tubes I passed the poles of two Bunsen elements; the
batteries ended up a few millimeters from the silver. At the end of a month, the silver had taken on
a color in all its parts; uniform yellow-amber color; I continued this experiment for another fifteen days without observing any particular phenomenon. The oxidation of the silver not having
changed color, I dismantled the device; the weighed shot had increased by 5 milligrams,
I continued the operation again after filling the balloon with oxygen and reloaded
the pile; After three weeks, the apparatus having been dismantled, the silver weighed had not
significantly increased in weight, its color had only become a little darker.

2nd experiments — In this experiment I replaced the oxygenate with nitrous oxide,
the apparatus remained the same; After fifteen days, the silver was oxidized and had the same color
as in the previous experiment. I continued the operation for another eight days, the silver weighed had
increased by 6 milligrams. I renewed the gas and charged the battery again: after two
weeks the device having been dismantled, the silver weighed had not significantly increased in weight,
the oxide had only become a darker color , it was denser and less attackable by
simple acids, sulfuric and nitric, than that of the previous experiment.

3rd and 4th experiments — I repeated the two previous operations under the influence of
solar light with a single Bunsen couple; the oxidation of silver took place more
quickly in these two experiments, and it was again in nitrous oxide that it
took place more quickly: the oxide formed was also darker in color in nitrous oxide
than in oxygen. Oxidation also stopped after a few days as
in previous experiments; This is because the oxide forms a kind of insoluble varnish which
prevents oxidation from continuing more deeply.

5th and 6th experiments. —I placed in the current of a voltaic circuit of a couple of Bunsen,
a piece of fine silver in 0 shot, 745 milligrams in confined oxygen;
the experiment took place under the direct influence of solar rays. Oxidation of silver was fine
faster than in previous experiments. After eight days, the whole piece of silver
had turned completely black; After fifteen, the device was dismantled, the silver had
increased by 8 milligrams.

I started the operation again and continued it for another fifteen days; the silver shot weighed
had increased by 5 milligrams. I extended the experiment for three weeks by renewing
the gas and the acid; At the end of this time, the weighed shot had only increased by 1
1/2 milligrams.

I treated the silver shot with cold pure sulfuric acid; A few bubbles of gas were released
at the beginning, but the oxide was not dissolved in any way. I removed the shot after washing it
with pure water; I immersed it in pure nitric acid at 40°, the oxide did not dissolve in any way,
only it came off the shot. This oxide treated by the mixture of two acids, sulfuric
and nitric, immediately dissolved.

This same experiment having been repeated in nitrous oxide, the silver oxidized even more
quickly, and the oxide produced was denser and blacker than that obtained in oxygen; it was
less attackable by acids, but also soluble in the mixture of the two acids.

This same experiment being repeated in nitrogen deutoxide, still placing the silver in the
voltaic circuit, it oxidized very quickly without offering anything particular in the progress of
the operation which was noticeably more rapid than in previous experience; in these three
experiments, the oxidation of silver a. began to develop on the protruding parts of the
shot which quickly turned black, while the hollow parts which turned
greenish pink, then purple, which darkened in color through the action of time, but without acquiring the same intensity as in your ends and other protruding parts.

These three experiments were repeated in my laboratory, much more time was
spent on them; However, the oxide formed has not acquired the same properties as that obtained under
the influence of the sun.

I noticed that the silver oxide obtained in oxygen, in proroxide and deutoxide
of nitrogen, under the double influence of the voltaic circuit and solar light, requires
an increasingly higher temperature to be reduced. high; the parts which are the last to dissolve are
those which oxidized first.

simple acids, sulfuric and nitric. 2° That the oxides obtained in these same experiments, sheltered
from solar light, always require a higher temperature, to be reduced, than
the oxide obtained by ordinary processes.

Having only been able to obtain small quantities of oxides by these means, I propose to
repeat these experiments by operating on silver filings subjected to the influence of the
voltaic current, which will allow me to obtain the times a larger quantity of oxide and to carry out
new experiments on this oxide obtained by these various means.

I hope to present shortly to the Academy a second memoir which will include part of my
other experiments which I have been continuing for a long time and which are nearing their end. They
will, I have no doubt, bring into a new light the possibility of the transmutation of silver into
gold, that is to say the entire phenomenon so long contested and now incontestable, of the
transmutation of metals.

PART TWO
SECOND MEMORY
ARTIFICIAL PRODUCTION OF GOLD. BY. OXIDATION OF SULPHIDES.

Decomposing pyrites almost always yield gold, this is a well-known fact, which I
have had occasion to observe in several parts of Mexico, especially near Sapotran el
Grandé, where there is a mountain of sulphide of decomposing iron. The river which passes at the foot
of this mountain carries gold in large enough quantities to give rise, in the rainy season
, to lucrative exploitation.

In the region of Quanajuato, near the mines of the LUZ, where there are also decomposing pyrites
, we find veins of gold: in truth, they are not rich, but they
confirm the fact that, in the vicinity pyrites, we can almost always see the presence
of gold. I was able to ensure that these pyrites contain traces of silver sulphide. In my
opinion, it is this sulphide which most directly produces gold; the other sulphides can undergo the
same transmutation, but more slowly, by longer work, and most often passing through
different intermediate stations, while the sulphide of silver passes directly to the state of gold.

In the first part of my memoirs on the transmutation of metals, I pointed out the silver sulphide mine
of Mr. Gonzalès, near Cozala, as one of the richest gold sulphide mines
in the world. everything: Mexico. This mine, shallow, is close to water sources
sulphurous hot water, the transmutation of silver sulphide into gold must certainly be favored by
the rise in temperature produced by the proximity of these thermal waters.

Guided by these observations, I undertook a series of experiments, with the aim of establishing whether
gold is really produced in the decomposition of sulphides. Five of these experiments were
begun in 1852 of this number, only two, the second and the third, could be
brought to give a result.

2nd experiments — I formed a mixture of the following substances:
Pulverized silica 30 parts.
Alumina 20
Iron 15
Copper 15
Silver 20

To these substances obtained in their greatest possible state of purity, before mixing,
I added sulfur flower, then I heated to release the excess of suffers; I divided
the material again, and left it exposed to air for two months. At the end of this
time, I watered it with water sharpened with 15% nitrous acid. I took care to shake from time
to time to give access to air, and I kept everything constantly humid, sprinkling it with the
same liquid. After a certain time, the material oxidized; crystals,
sulfates and metals were formed in the presence; the material took on a green tint. So that the oxidation was as complete as possible, I continued to operate in the same way for a whole year. Only then
did I subject the material to a small test: I obtained appreciable traces of gold. I
subjected the material to heat strong enough to decompose the sulfates formed, in the first
part of the experiment. I added again flower of sulfur in sufficient quantity to
completely transform the material into sulphides.

I started the experiment again and continued it as I have just described it, without making any
modification; I repeated all the same manipulations three times. The material, tested by
mercury, gave me, out of a hundred parts of silver, 0.0012 of gold.

3rd experiments — For this experiment I used the same substances, in the same
proportions as for experiment no. 2. I dissolved all the metals together in
pure nitric acid. I added pulverized silica and alumina to the solution; I passed
a stream of hydrogen sulphide through the liquor until the dissolved metals were completely precipitated.
I evaporated until dryness, then exposed the material to contact with air. Silica and alumina have
facilitated the division of sulphides, and, consequently, the access of air into the mass; my goal was
to activate the oxidation and at the same time check whether the presence of silica and alumina would not
promote transmutation. At the end of six weeks, I watered the material with a little
nitric acid mixed with fifteen parts of water, I continued this manipulation as in the
previous experiment. When the mass was completely oxidized, I tested it; the gold seemed to me to be in a
smaller quantity than in experiment No. 2. I added enough water to dissolve all the soluble salts
which had formed, then I passed through the solution a stream of hydrogen sulphide, to
transform the metals into sulphides again; I evaporated the excess liquid, and continued
the operation as above. I repeated this same operation three times, without having had to point out
any particularity in its progress. The material, tested as previously by distilled mercury
, provided me with 0.0010 of gold out of a hundred parts of silver.

The result of experiment no. 1 was lost. I had increased, for this experiment, the proportion of
silica and alumina, and reduced that of the metals: after having sulphurized the material, I had done
pass, on different occasions, a current of protoxide and nitrogen deutoxide, alternating it
with a current of air.

Experiment No. 4 had the same fate as Experiment No. 1;
I had added zinc and antimony to the previous mixture , with a little lime and potash. The metals had been dissolved in nitric acid: the operation had to be continued as in the previous experiment.

Experiment No. 5 was undertaken under slightly different conditions. As in experiment
No. 3, I had only operated on iron, copper and silver, removing silica and aluminum, in order to
ensure whether they contributed, yes or not, through an action whatever to the act of
transmutation.

It was with a pain that experimenters will easily understand that I saw these
experiments lost; I could gather valuable data from it, based on which I would have operated more
reliably. But it happened to me what, unfortunately, happens too often with
long-term experiments, when the person who undertakes them is not master of his time: the man proposes, and business disposes.

What made me finish,
rather than I should have in order to achieve a better result, the two experiments of which I have just given the very summary presentation; it is the fear of seeing, in them
prolonging, breaking my devices. By repeated tests on different occasions during the
course of these experiments, I convinced myself that as the quantity of gold increases in the
material, the quantity already produced activates the new production; there is therefore everything to be
gained by continuing and extending the operation. I can no longer remain in any doubt about the fact that
in the oxidation of pyrites, gold is produced daily, but that this gold only appears
when the transmutation of the metallic parts, modified in their molecular state, is complete.

Now, it often happens that these modified parts in the decomposing pyrite are carried by
the water into the course of a river or a neighboring river, where the transformation of one metal
into another is completed; the continual movement that water provides to these molecules must greatly facilitate this operation, by enabling them, in their journey, to condense the quantity of gas suitable
for the accomplishment of this metamorphosis. This would explain why we do not
always see gold on the very site of the pyrite deposit, because there the materials are not
always conducive to the completion of this phenomenon.

The materials used in my experiments, and the proportions of these materials, were chosen and
determined somewhat at random. It is only by repeating the manipulations that we will arrive at
more certain data, and that we will better know the bodies most capable of activating the phenomenon of
transmutation. The presence of chlorides, bromides, iodides and that of sulfur combined with
metals are simple intermediates whose role is to activate transmutation, the condensation
of gas which takes place in the material and gives it the shape of the metal the most perfect in producing
gold. This is what I propose to make even more evident through new experiences.

No matter, I'm moving slowly towards the goal, but I'm moving forward. According to the experiments that I am continuing, I hope that before long we will compose artificial placers for the production of gold, just as we form artificial nitrites: basically, one is not more difficult than the other. Just as we
do for the nitrieres, we will bring in the atmospheric air, from which we receive so much, and where everything returns. It is up to us to encourage its action on the materials that we want to transmute; he alone will do the rest, at his expense, in a time whose duration, more or less long, will have brought this universal agent into play. By multiplying and varying the experiences of
transmutations, we will infallibly find the means to operate promptly: then the
benefits could be immense.

I am convinced that if we operated on soil suitably suited to these kinds of
transmutations, we would achieve better results than by operating in earthenware, in
which the action of magnetic currents is weak or almost zero. Now the action of these currents
must be largely responsible for the changes in the molecular state of matter, which allows it
to absorb or condense new quantities of gas, and thus to acquire entirely new properties, properties which will only change when its molecular state is broken by its passage into a new genus.

At the rate at which scientific progress is progressing, what would have required fifty years or more a century ago
for the practical use of a fruitful idea can nowadays be achieved in less than ten years,
especially if Efforts made towards this end are encouraged by a bonus of significant value. For me, if I happen to see the founding, in the plain of Grenelle, of a factory where artificial placers
would be composed for the production of gold, placers initially equal and, later, of much superior in wealth to those of California, I declare that I will not be surprised; because, in my conviction, all the placers in the world are destined to one day remain well behind this industry, currently in its incubation period. With my ardent and firm convictions, it is a great heartbreak for me to only have a limited time to devote to these experiences, which have so much charm for me, and so much future for the human race. I do not doubt, I have never doubted, that the alchemists could certainly make gold, make a lot of it and make colossal fortunes: their secret died with them. It will no longer be like this for anyone; everyone will be able to make gold, but by varied processes, some with loss, others with profit; the whole question is there: for a long time to come, the solution to the problem will be in manipulations. Allow me to point out here a fact very worthy of note, and which completely coincides with my ideas. Since new refining processes, which date back about half a century, have made it possible to remove the gold contained in old silver coins,

The pieces subsequent to the introduction of these processes only contain traces of gold;
At least that’s what those who presided over their creation thought. How is it then that
today we are once again looking for our silver currency, which we claimed to no longer
contain gold, and which we realize; profits by nevertheless withdrawing new quantities of gold, which
means that, day by day, our currency; money disappears from circulation? The fact cannot
be denied.

Without going beyond the purely chemical point of view of the question, I point out that those who
melt silver coins to extract gold are carrying out a real transmutation;
artificial gold is produced and added to the gold already existing in the coin; this is why,
despite expensive manipulations, the melting and refining of silver coins provides
high profits. We see no end to this state of things which, through the improvement of the
processes for transmutation, can only expand day by day; it leads,
as I predicted in the first part of my memoirs, to the demonetization of gold, a fait accompli
in Holland, then to the demonetization of silver. Precious metals will cease
to be the sign of values; they will simply be merchandise, and the sun will nonetheless rise
at its proper time.

In the meantime, the art of transmutations, this art which must so profoundly move the world, is progressing and moving towards its industrial period; So why are we trying to deny it?

CONFERENCE

Done in Paris, March 16, 1889

GENTLEMEN,
Encouraged by the kind reception given by the public to the first conferences, despite
some harsh criticisms which were involved, I come today to thank you for your kind
assistance and I promise you to spare nothing to deserve it more and more. That is why.

Gentlemen, I appear before you again to give you further proof of the reality
of my discovery and its importance.

Gentlemen, you know, I am neither a charlatan nor one of those lawless men who make
money from everything. I only want and seek one thing, the glory and happiness of my country. Humble
disciple of Hermes, Paracelsus and Van Helmont, I honor myself with the title of Alchemist, a title
once synonymous with sorcerer, a difficult title to bear,

demon, centuries in certain respects hardly worthy of regret, where a simple match maker would have been
burned alive on a pyre lit with the products of his industry.

Yes. Gentlemen, I am an alchemist, I have made gold, I still make it every day, in very
limited quantities, it is true, and under the conditions of a laboratory experiment; but I am perhaps approaching the moment of delivering to the learned world a process for making gold under the conditions of large-scale industry, as we make glass, bronze, as Mr. Deville managed to make aluminum
as we do today with magnesium.

For almost 50 years I have been fighting to make this truth of artificial gold known, based on an
undeniable fact.

Taken in pity by some, derided by others, harshly rejected by those who
seemed to be most likely to welcome me, I find myself today asking myself: what should we do, what
should we say, after all my affirmations of sincerity remained sterile. The disbelief towards me is
so great that we block our ears so as not to hear, and we close our eyes so as not to
see: so fanaticized are we by this gold, we do not want to hear anything that could harm to his
value, to his power, in a word, he is a god that we worship.

However, we will have to face the facts of this capital fact of artificial gold which is too
important for it to go unnoticed. Imaginations are at work and minds are in search of progress,” General Février said a few weeks ago in his farewell to his soldiers. “Woe to him who stops along the way, he is quickly left behind!... . Never linger on the road, take the lead and never leave it ." These wise and patriotic advice pushed me to publicize this happy discovery that I kept hidden from the public for a long time. Moreover, when I reached the decline of my age, I believed that my conscience made it my duty to speak up, which is why I dare to appear before you today. Gentlemen, to explain to you my principles on the transmutation of metals. They led me on a long and perilous journey, to laborious research, and finally to an unexpected discovery whose still undetermined consequences promise our country a brilliant future of glory and prosperity. The starting point of my convictions and my research on the transmutation of metals, the key to the entire system, is the unity of matter. That idea,
bodies admitted as simple bodies for scientists, are those: whose decomposition cannot be pushed any further , this idea, I say, is in my opinion perfectly rational. In reality, there are no
simple bodies, any more among your metals than among other bodies: there is matter one
in its essence, subject to laws partly unknown, partly known, and applied at will.

by human knowledge, laws by virtue of which matter shows itself to us in forms that are sometimes
variable, sometimes permanent, there is nothing more.

This was the basis of the doctrines of the alchemists of yesteryear, and today's scholars are able to agree, on this point as on many others, the alchemists were right.

These ideas still have so little currency in the world, they overturn so many theories currently in
possession. of science, if this expression is permitted, that I need to rely on
the authority of a great name, Lavoisier, one of the fathers of modern chemistry, who does not dare
fully admit his convictions on such a scabrous subject, allowed them to glimpse, by showing where
his uncontested theory of the caloric leads. We know that Lavoisier was the first to designate by this name the unknown and mysterious force which produces on our organs the sensation of heat and cold, which
dilates bodies by its presence and makes them pass through the three states: solid, liquid and gas. But
Lavoisier points out that by only raising the average temperature of the
surface of the globe to 100 or 120 degrees, water disappears: no more ocean, no more lakes or rivers, all of this is part of the atmosphere, no more vegetation, more living beings. Heat a little more, streams of
lead, zinc and bismuth will flow like water; continue to raise the temperature there
is none so high that we cannot suppose it is capable of a higher degree, a moment
will come when the earth will be in the state of igneous fusion, through which it has obviously passed; heat again, the igneous liquid will become a mass of incandescent vapors with a nucleus like comets
, then an assembly of extremely tenuous vapors like those of nebulae, finally
at only a few thousand pyrometric degrees, there will be only molecules so
divided that it will be possible to doubt their existence, suppose the decrease of the caloric in the
opposite direction, you will successively have a nebula, a comet, a planet, finally in all the
conditions in which we see ours today.

If the will of the creator, through the action of a single force, the Caloric, can make matter undergo
all these transformations, what becomes of simple bodies and compound bodies in all of this?

Was it not, as far as one could implicitly affirm it at that time, the unity of matter?

If matter is one, if science can make it take on so many different forms at will, why would
a further step not allow it to also reproduce at will the forms of the various
metals, especially those of precious metals? "

I have described above my struggles and my work since 1848.

Having managed after thirty years of the most stubborn work to acquire a modest fortune, I resolved in
1884 to resume my work on gold and to bring it to a successful conclusion
. 1885, I wrote a letter to Mr. Berthelot which remained unanswered. Not yet believing the time
had come to speak, I continued my work in the silence of my laboratory: Finally, finding in
my new experiences in support of my discovery of a fact intended to shed light on the
phenomenon of the transmutation of metals, in June of last year I submitted a sealed envelope to
the Academy of Sciences on the new fact. It was then that I addressed myself to , my country by
writing first to the members of the Budget Commission, then to the
Senators and Deputies. Today I come to insist more particularly on you. Gentlemen,
so that you can help me.

In my point of view, the reactions under the influence of which the transformation of metals takes place
constitute a complex phenomenon where the main role belongs to the atmospheric elements.

They are the ones who daily carry out these metamorphoses whose course we cannot follow,
as the effects are so slow, starting with potassium and sodium and ending with the
precious metals Silver, Gold and Platinum.

The air must act first by its simple elements, then by its combined elements.

The second essential agent for all these metallic transformations is water, the great
solvent of Nature, constantly renewing itself, always in movement, which I will call the
nourishing mother par excellence of all bodies. It is responsible for providing by itself the
proper nourishment for all mineral individualities: In fact we see it rising into this atmosphere
in a state of purity to draw its elements:

Oxygen and Nitrogen and other bodies found there in minimal quantities; all the molecules of these different bodies are more or less modified by
the stars, especially by the sun which comes to vivify them and make them capable of being assimilated with these different beings according to their age, to constitute this great family of the mineral kingdom. This water, descending to earth, will be loaded with new substances, nitrates of potash and soda and others, then continuing its work, it crosses the thin layer of humus, then the
alluvial soils where it will begin by providing the food to these beings that she will meet on her
way. It then penetrates into the metalliferous rocks, associated with various other bodies,
Chlorides, Pyrites, Carbonates and they will meet with the alkaline nitrates, from which
chemical reactions will result; electric and magnetic currents will occur; these
rocks will be decomposed; of these different bodies in the presence, under various pressures and
temperatures, multiple reactions, dissociations of some of these bodies will occur
, others will yield an excess of their combination, all these elements in the nascent state in the
presence of their mineral individualities, will allow them to absorb the elements specific to
their perfection and to pass from one age to another of inalterability, until they arrive after
several stations at their last degree of perfection; these reactions are constantly renewed by the
continual current of this liquid generating all families.

Nitrogen seems to act in the combinations as a ferment would act in the transformations of
organic matter. Under the influence of this agent, the fixation of oxygen, its more or
less lasting combination with the radical, will take place. This for me is the key to the transformation of metals; and everything leads me to believe that the radical is hydrogen. Whether these theoretical ideas are true or false, exact or erroneous, this is what I will not undertake to discuss here, I believe I must limit myself to saying that without it having been possible for me to acquire mathematical certainty from their reality, their influence governed my experiments, their probability in my eyes was born from the effects noted during several years of observations; If I mention it here it is to better understand the path that I followed, and perhaps to shed some light on the path along which those who,
according to me, follow the same order of research will follow.

In this capital experiment, with artificial gold, in fact, a reaction took place, which is in
disagreement with the chemical facts known to date:
generated a new phenomenon for science: as long as we cannot clearly specify its
causes, the art of transmutation will hardly progress. So what is needed for this? Popularizing
experiments, repeating them endlessly, varying their circumstances, this is how we will arrive at a
certain process for effecting a complete transmutation of one metal into another. The whole question is there, study through practice combined with theory, we will find the key to the mystery. Then the transmutation of metals will be the simplest thing in the world.

It is to achieve this goal, Gentlemen, that the means fail me, I am stopped on all sides
in my experiments; having no laboratory, where I can do them conveniently with a chance
of success: having at my disposal only a few tubes and flasks, a modest accessory completely
insufficient: not possessing any apparatus to study, appreciate and record all the
circumstances which can present themselves in a reaction of this kind, it is by
careful and careful observation that we will be able, by modifying the devices, as well as the
circumstances, to find the procedure to follow to achieve the desired goal.

This admission of helplessness will not surprise you; you know how one after the
other they took away from me all the means that could have provided me with the resources to continue my work and bring it to a good end. Moreover, it is an unfortunate point of resemblance with the inventors who preceded me.

None of them, as far as I know, perfected their invention with their own means and too often
they lost the fruit, exhausted as they were by the expenses they had incurred, or discouraged
by unbelief or public carelessness. In this regard. Gentlemen, I believe I will
never be like them, I will not be tired, I will not be discouraged, and I dare to hope that I and my discovery will not be stifled. I have faith in the future because I am firmly convinced. I have made gold,
as long as I am seconded I will make more, I will make a lot of it, I will make it using processes
that fit into large-scale industry and when I get there. Gentlemen, believe me, I will not throw
light under a bushel.

While waiting for them to undeceive themselves, those who imagine, by their constant obstinacy towards me,
stopping the spread of this discovery which displeases them, which annoys them, because their interests could be compromised: they would like to keep it away, make you disappear if that were possible,
rejoice that this discovery has seen the light of day in our beautiful country of France, which we must strive to ennoble more and more and on which our knowledge and our justice must attract the sympathies of the people.

No, they prefer to place obstacle after obstacle, in order to give our enemies time to arrive and
perhaps overtake us: This is patriotism of another kind.

Well, gentlemen, behind those whose selfishness stifles love of the country, it is urgent for us
to resolutely confront the present difficulties and seek to resolve them promptly. Know that
this discovery will be like love at first sight the day we can safely transform
one metal into another. An example will help you better understand the depth of
the abyss into which we are threatened to fall from one day to the next. A kilo of pure copper to
be transformed into a kilo of pure gold requires little expense, judging from the results I have
obtained; there are only expenses for the raw material; Acid, fuel, and labor.

I put the whole thing at 150 francs as a last resort: this price could easily be reduced by half, when we
operate on a medium scale, which will put the net price of the kilo at 75 francs instead of 3,444 fr 44
centimes which it worth today: net profit, 3,369 francs. Isn't it beautiful enough to deign
to take care of? You can judge from this the cataclysm that this discovery will bring throughout the
world, when we will be able to produce gold 40 to 50 times cheaper than it is worth today.

Thus, a person who has 50,000 francs in gold will only have a value in; round number of
1,000 francs, and that will not be the last word. So what are we waiting for, we must be ready for any
event, it is not by running away from the difficulty that we will be able to resolve it, that we will be able to be master of the situation.

For a long time there has been a fire that has been smoldering under the ashes, all it takes is a spark to make it burst, then no one will be able to stop its progress, which will be rapid, have no doubt, we will be forced, in spite of ourselves, to suffer the consequences which will be terrible if we do not arrive first to mitigate their effects, we will only have to curse ourselves for having been incredulous in the voice of truth.

Allow me, Gentlemen, to remind you here of the judicious words of Mr. Richet in the
scientific journal of March 18, when speaking of the progress made in certain neighboring nations. “

It would be necessary,” he said,
more powerful day by day. The secret of this ever-growing power must not be
sought elsewhere than in the increasingly intimate association of science and industry.
Unfortunately, we are too personal and this defect prevents us from arriving on time. , because
our existence is too short to bring to fruition a just and recognized idea to be able to
put it into practice and to benefit from it while enriching society, we arrive too late. "
What I desire above all is is that we see the fact of artificial gold, this is for me the
essential point. I am neither a jumper nor a fool, I do not want my good faith to be doubted
and one can say that I tried to deceive my country. You must therefore be convinced by experience of the fact that I am moving forward, and if what I presented to you, at the academy, is not artificial
gold, it is useless to continue my research.

Gentlemen, I walk with difficulty, driven as I am by this fear constantly present in my
mind that I may be overwhelmed. This is what I would like to avoid in the interest of my country. This is
what gave me the strength to come here in order to draw your attention in particular to the seriousness of
this question of artificial gold which is an incontestable truth.

To finish. Gentlemen, I will tell you that it is not enough for me to be convinced of what I am saying,
you must also drown it out. Knowing the truth is not only your right, but it is
even your duty, because it is in your most sacred interests. If all my efforts have been in
vain to date, this is no reason for you to stop there; it is therefore up to you to
demand from your representatives that light be shed on this discovery, here; Gentlemen, we
all have only one goal, the Fatherland.

It is therefore to you that I appeal. Gentlemen of the press, you who have all the knowledge
required to appreciate the advantages and dangers of the present and future situation which
this discovery brings to us, and all the dangers which may result from it for our Fatherland, if we
are anticipated by a neighboring nation which will certainly benefit to our detriment. So let us
not be surprised, and that is why I come today, fulfilling a duty. Appeal
to your patriotism to find generous and powerful support from you, so that
all those who have confidence in me and my discovery,

I also address you, Gentlemen, Students, Bourgeois, Tradesmen and Workers, so that
you lend me moral support through the generous enthusiasm of your fair and clear-sighted minds, not
imbued with the prejudices of the times. You will judge soundly the value of this fact of artificial gold, and will seek to prevent the dangers that the homeland may run if the foreigner gets ahead of us. Let us always remember the noble words of General Février: “Woe to him who stops along the way ii.

METAL GROWTH

Paris, June 9, 1889

Dear Sir,
The conformity of your ideas and mine on the unity of matter has brought us into contact. Some time ago
I had the opportunity to hear you in one of your conferences. Boulevard des
Capucines, and I was able to approve your statements announcing that your metals are compound bodies , and that it is possible to produce artificial gold like any other metal
through synthesis and chemical and electrochemical reactions . This is also my opinion and, since you asked me, I will tell you the facts and experiences on which it is based, as well as the conclusions that I believe I can draw from them. The problems to be solved in the order of ideas where I am on mineral and metallic materials have concerned me from my beginning as a civil mining engineer, from my leaving the School and throughout my long career as director metallurgical factories of Gommentry and Montluçon, Fumel, etc. and the coal mining operations that depend on it. For a long time I was only able to use some leisure time for my favorite studies. But several years ago, having been affected by progressive paralysis from which I was only able to cure myself after a year, and forced to give up my active work as a mining engineer and metallurgist, I specially occupied, for about four years, with the great question of the unity of matter. First as a system and means of reducing the expense of experiments and of facilitating my studies, work and demonstrations, I left the production of precious metals almost aside, and I only concerned myself with the production of copper, thinking, I believe, with good reason, that the question of copper being resolved, this solution will lead to all the others. However, several times I have observed the production of silver and gold, and very often that of zinc and that of aluminum in the alumina state.

through their reports, I managed to produce copper i
n the laboratory under conditions which
seemed to me capable of being applied industrially.
But in order to determine the genesis of this metal (like any other no doubt) it is essential
that it pre-exists in the soluble state, in the chemical baths, where it must be formed, under the influence of special reagents.

So that metal production takes place by increase; as happens, for
example, with plant materials.

I will add that the intervention of certain fertilizing materials seems useful, if not necessary,
as well as certain conditions of heat, light, electricity, time, etc. always as
for the increase of materials plants.

The metallic increase varies depending on the method with which the operation is carried out,
so I was able to obtain metallic increments exceeding 100 per 100. And I have reason to hope for
double that.

On the other hand, by operating too quickly and without care, the metallic increase is
insignificant, or does not occur.

Finally, the metal coming from metallic growth appears at first to be in its nascent state, and then
it does not present all the reactions and properties of the adult metal; it can even disappear in
whole or in part, but we manage to fix it and bring it to the adult state under the influence of certain
chemical reactions.

Please accept, dear Sir, the assurance of my distinguished consideration.

VIRLOY’S BROWN.
SCIENTIFIC AND COMPARATIVE STUDY ON ARTIFICIAL GOLD.

Having been put in contact with Mr. Tiflereau in one of his first conferences on the unity of matter
at the Salle Pétrelle, on February 16, 1889, I was charged, by a business group
interested in the question, with verifying the nature of artificial gold in comparison with samples of raw
and purified metal.

Establishing by chemical analysis and the study of micrographic properties that a sample of gold is
natural or artificial is something impossible at first glance. Because if the samples are of the same
metal and have the same degree of purity, they must give absolutely identical reactions and
similar or analogous crystallographic forms.

If I have allowed the insertion in this volume of the scientific note which follows, it is because we find there a curious fact which, unfortunately while explaining nothing sheds new light on the artificial production of one metal by derivation from another. The many people who take care of
transmutations will be able to take advantage of this purely analytical document according to their ideas.
Difficult to convince, but not being an enemy of new ideas, I did this work in my
industrial laboratory, and I will submit the impartial result of my observations.

MICRO-CHEMICAL ANALYSIS
OF AN ARTIFICIAL GOLD SAMPLE
provided by Mr. TIFFEREAU.

The sample studied bears No. 3 and the mention (prepared in Guadalajara, 1847, with silver filings
alloyed with copper in the proportion of the coin).

PHYSICAL CHARACTERS.

The material is in a small sealed tube, which appears, at first glance, to be a
fairly fine greenish-yellow powder.

Under the microscope objective we see that the powder is composed of metallic grains, of a
beautiful dull yellow and a greenish yellow in the thin parts.

The grains are formed by the juxtaposition of metallic particles, rounded like
platinum foam; but as the material is yellow, it closely resembles the cut of a
bee cake deprived of its honey, or even a fragment of sponge.

We do not notice any roughness and acute angles, the material is hilly, we also do not find
the shiny faces of a metallic crystal.

Unmelted metal breaks into fine powder under the hammer, but after melting it becomes
perfectly malleable.

CHEMICAL CHARACTERS.

A part of the gold powder weighing 0 g 100 milligrams was easily dissolved in a mixture
of azotic acid and hydrochloric acid: it was on the bichloride prepared with the powder that the
chemical reactions took place. Here is the composition of aqua regia, the best for dissolving this
product: Pure and fuming azotic acid = two parts, purified hydrochloric acid = ten parts.
We tried to dissolve the metal in a mixture of azotic acid and hydriodic acid, it remained
completely insoluble.

A Bromhydrique aqua regia was able to dissolve it with a little difficulty.

A mixture of hydrochloric acid and chromic acid produced a vigorous attack on the metal.

By heating a flake of gold with a small fragment of potash in air, the mass becomes yellowish,
the gold dissolves little by little in the form of aurate of potash.

A similar experiment carried out with soda gave nothing. A sample of gold coated
with concentrated hydrogen sulfide remained bright even after twenty hours.

A fragment of gold treated with a droplet of mercury dissolved very well.

TESTING GOLD BY DRY TORCH METHODS.

A metal shard heated to a high temperature melted into yellow, malleable globules;
when they solidify, after fusion, they become incandescent again, this reaction is
absolutely similar to that produced with pure gold. This gold melted into crystal colors it
pale pink.

WET GOLD TESTING.

Chemical reactions carried out on the aqueous solution of the bichloride of the metal to be studied.

Hydrogen Sulfide: black precipitate, slowly soluble in alkaline sulfides.
Ammonia sulfhydrate: black precipitate, soluble in excess reagent.
Carbonate of soda: no precipitate, neither cold nor hot.
Potash: no precipitate, neither hot nor cold.
Ammonia: yellow precipitate, clear liquor.
Potassium cyanoferride: emerald green coloring.
Tin chloride solution: very weak reddish precipitate, the liquid is very brown.
Oxalic Acid: the liquor turns indigo blue, and a brown cloud forms,
probably coming from the reduction and precipitation of the gold. In the analyzed sample we found
no traces of silica and copper, but we noted the presence of a little silver.

STUDY ON NATURAL GOLD PHYSICAL PROPERTIES.

Native gold is never pure, it is always alloyed with silver in varying proportions,
silica is also found there.

It always presents itself with a yellow color of its own, and the metal is all the more yellow
as it contains less silver. Its state is metallic; its natural surfaces are not very shiny;
but under the polishing of a wolf's tooth it takes on a lively, slightly greenish shine.

Natural gold is harder than lead and tin, but less hard than silver, copper and iron.

It is very malleable, and samples can be reduced to extremely thin sheets by
gradual beating. The density of natural gold is very variable, but on average it is 14.4 (The
density of Mr. Tîffereau's gold could not be established absolutely, because the sample was too
minimal, but by special laboratory experiments it was recognized that its density is
much higher than natural gold).

Native gold occurs in filaments, in branches, in small crystals, having the shape of
quadrangular pyramids or octahedrons, in blades, in flakes, in plates, in grains scattered in the
rocks, in powder mixed with sand, finally it is often found in nuggets, that is to say in
irregular pieces of varying size.

CHEMICAL PROPERTIES.

To carry out the comparative chemical study on natural gold, I used not impure native gold, but
purified gold, prepared in the laboratory.

A gold coin was dissolved in an aqua regia made with one part of azotic acid at 20
hydrometer and 4 parts of very pure hydrochloric acid. The liquor is filtered to separate it from the
silver chloride that has formed, and an excess of antimony proto-chloride is added, dissolved
in a mixture of water and hydrochloric acid. The gold precipitates after a few hours,
especially when the liquor is lightly heated, in the form of small coherent flakes which come
together quickly.

It was washed first with hydrochloric acid, then with distilled water and melted in an
earthen crucible with a mixture of nitre and Borax.

We thus obtained a base of 1000/1000 gold, that is to say chemically pure.
This gold was dissolved in aqua regia, transformed into gold bichloride, evaporated to dryness to
remove excess acid and taken up in distilled water.

The gold reactions well known to chemists were carried out on the aqueous solution.

I have drawn up the table below, to make it easier for people who have not studied Chemistry to
compare the chemical reactions of artificial gold and pure natural gold.

Hydrogen sulphide: black precipitate, soluble in alkaline sulphides.
Ammonia sulfate: black precipitate, soluble in excess reagent.
Carbonate of soda: no precipitate when cold, when hot yellowish precipitate of gold oxide: the liquor
retains sodium aurate in solution.
Potash: in a neutral solution, especially hot; reddish yellow precipitate of gold oxide.
Ammonia: fulminating golden yellow precipitate.
Potassium cyanoferride: green, emerald coloring.
Tin Chlorides Solution: reddish brown precipitate of Cassius purple; an extended solution
is not precipitated, but slowly colors red-brown.
Oxalic Acid: hot precipitation of metallic gold in the form of brown powder; upon
precipitation, the liquor turns purple. A small quantity of filings coming from the
base of pure gold prepared, as was said above, was treated with iodhydric aqua regia, the solution of the
metal took place.

completed and fast processed gold powder. A mixture of hydrochloric acid and chromic acid
vigorously attacked the metal. By heating a fragment of potash in air with a little
gold powder, the material became a beautiful yellow, soluble in water, it is aurate of potash.
The same operation being carried out with Sodium Protoxide or Soda, we also obtained a
slightly less yellow mass, but soluble in water, there was formation of sodium aurate.

A sample of powdered gold coated with a solution of hydrogen sulfide gas remained completely shiny.

A sample of powdered gold coated with ammonia sulphide quickly turned black,
because a layer of sulphide formed on the surface of the metal.

A little pure gold powder heat treated with mercury has completely disappeared, an
amalgam of gold is formed.

DRY TORCH TESTING OF GOLD.

A metal shard heated to a high temperature under the tip of the blowtorch melts into
yellow, malleable globules; as they solidify, they undergo the phenomenon of incandescence, and the
surface of the globules appears wrinkled.

NOTES AND CONCLUSION.

By comparing the physical properties of artificial gold to those of natural gold, we note a
significant difference, although we can rarely find, it is true, powders of native gold,
having the same appearance as that of M .Tiffereau.

As for the chemical properties, they are interesting to note; The main reactions of artificial gold
are almost analogous to those of native gold, but some reactions as can be seen
differ significantly from the usual reactions.

I claim that it is precisely this anomalous result which gives a certain weight to the work of Mr.
Tiffereau.

There is a fact here that I cannot explain, but which ultimately exists; This indicates that artificial gold has all the physical properties of native gold, but differs from it in some
chemical properties, not belonging to any other metal.

I will recall here a passage from the report of Mr. Le Brun de Virloy, mining engineer, on
metallic growth with which he was very concerned. (The metal coming from metallic growth
appears first to be in its nascent state, and then it does not present all the reactions and
properties of the adult metal. The metal can even disappear in whole or in part,

I do not have to discuss this theory here, but I note that the result of our work seems to
support it.

My mission is limited to giving a complete account of the laboratory work carried out under my
direction, of the gold sample given to me by Mr. Tiffereau and it is to its exact study that I have attached myself.

The sample studied was not made before my eyes, having been prepared in Mexico in 1847. GUSTAVE ITASSE Chemist, 8, rue Bayen, Paris-Ternes