Helena weekly herald. [volume] (Helena, Mont.) 1867-1900, 1878-12-26
TransmutatiOn of Metals.
from Tinsley's Magazine. ]


Raymond Lully performed transmutation
miracle before King Edward of England,
by changing $4,000 pounds of quicksilver in
to corresponding lump of solid gold. and
| adds that the first rose mobiles were coined
out of this identical Lullean gold. The tellers
of big stories are, as rule, equally reckless
and ignorant, and lack-must of them, at
least-the faculty of calculation and the pow
er of computations and there is in very truth
no bigger story-teller to be found than history.
Fifty thousand pounds of quicksilver forms
a respectable mass, not quite so readily pro-
cured in lump. 1t would fill something like
space of fifty-eight cubic feet-a bulk GER
tainly rather difficult to operate upon in the
times of the first Edward, even by so distin-
guished and accomplished an adept as the
great Lully. Basing the calculation in the
rough upon the respective specific gravities
of the two metals, the transmutation would
have produced something like f2, SOC, 900 of
our money-an enormous sum in the days of
Edward l. The real truth of the matter was
that the ingenious Raymond, perfectly aware
of one OF the most valuable properties of
quicksilver, made up, in presence of the
ignorant and credulous King, and his equally
ignorant and credulous courtiers, mixture
of copper, tin, lead, etc., with an aurO. mercu-
rial amalgam, obtained by dissolving GER
tain amount of gold in quicksilver. and sub
jected the mixture to strong heat, which
process would, of course, ultimately end in
the production of just as much pure gold as
the mercury bad held in amalgamation. This
was most simple trick, indeed, but quite
sufficiently ingenious for the limited intelli-
gence of people in the dark ages. The King
was much astounded, and deeply chagrined
when he afterward endeavored to initiate
Lully's "simple process" OF course be
omitted to put in the gold However, as Lul-
ly had generously made his experiments gra-
tis, no great harm was done. What could
have been Lully's motive in thus selling the
King of England? Well, perhaps, the great
adept was humorist in his way, who might
have dearly liked to chuckle in Imagination
over poor disappointed Longshanks' long face.
"Wise" Queen Elizabeth and the wise men
of her court we're done in a somewhat similar,
though certainly little more ingenious, fash
ion by travelling monk adept, who dipped
knife and file-ostentatiously used by him
previously in some laboratory 0perations-in
presence of the Queen and her court, into
wonderful tincture, which miraculously con-
verted the part dipped into solid gold.
The knife was permitted to remain in
collection of curiosities of Queen Elizabeth
until the latter half of last century, when the
famous mechanician Geffroy publicly ex-
posed the cheat before the French Academy
of Sciences. The trick had been performed
simply with knife and file, both consist
ing of two halves-a steel and gold one
deftly soldered together, and coated all over
by an ingenious process with thin film of
steel, highly polished, and presenting thus to
the eye uniform surface of STEEL This
film was, of course, easily dissolved and re-
moved by the nitric acid tincture leaving the
solid gold exposed to view. The trick was
neatly and ingeniously done, and the monk
was wise enough to charge nothing for it;
he refused, of course, point-blank, to sell his
secret to her Majesty. He rested content
with having sold her Majesty herself, to
whom he pleaded, in excuse of his refusal
that transmutation was an occult and unholy
art, not fit to be touched by the sacred hand
of royal virgin of the most Christian house
of Tudor. What object could this monk
have had in view? Difficult to say. History
simply hints that he had to prefer to the
Queen certain pleas and supplications in fa-
vor of the religious confraternity to which
he belonged, and that he resorted to this in
genious device to dispose her Majesty favor
ably to his suit.