The Montgomery advertiser., 1903-07-29
HAS THE DREAM BEEN REAL
 TZEDP

One of the absorbing dreams of the early ages, coming up through what we now call the Middle Ages, and even sur viving to modern times, was the search for the philosophers Stone" or the won derful elixir which one authority a'Iudes to as "a soluble solid substance which was believed to have the property of transmitting the baser metals into silver or gold and of prolonging life.''
 These were the objects sought for by the wise men during centuries of labor and research. To change copper, lead, iron or other common metal into gold and 10 prolong human life indefinitely, were the dreams in pursuit of which some of the wisest men of the past wore put their lives, spent all their time and means, and died in disappointment. This substance, the ''el iksir'' of the Arabian alchemists, was firmly believed in and eagerly sought during all the ages. Many claimed to have found it, but there was always something lacking. The alleged discover CTS failed to make genuine gold. and they failed to prolong their own lives. Some of them spoke of it as ''the great elixir" and asserted that when shaken in very small quantity into melted silver, lead or other base metal, was said to transmute 1t into gold" The words was said' show that no one really had the wonder full substance.
 It is not necessary to go into the his- tory of these old philosophers or to cetail their efforts and failures. We have been led to make these reflections on account of two articles which were printed in The Advertiser yesterday morning, one from London intimating that the discov- cries in connection with radium may re- suit in discovering the method of making gold, and the other, and far more import ant one, from Philadelphia, declaring that the art of making gold has been really discovered and proven. Perhaps the expression making gold" is not ex- actly a correct one. because no human being can really make a metal, but If he separates the atoms of which a metal is composed and reassembles them in new form, he has produced from the original material new metal.
 Of course the whole story may te a fake, without any foundation of fact. but he is a bold man who will assert that anything is impossible. The philosophy, the chemistry and the alchemy of nature produce results which no human being can fully understand. When two plants grow side by side, fed from the same soil. the same water and the same air, and one produces a melon and the other a potato, no man can tell why it is so So. when gold, silver and copper are found in the same ore, all formed from the same original clements. so far as we know, how do we know the process by which different metals were formed? We don't know and it may be that man has found the way to do what nature has hereto fore monopolized.
 But if the alleged discovery is really true, no human imagination is vivid enough to picture the result If genuine gold can be made of any other metal, practically as We make bricks out of clay and sand. how long will it be before it will be worth no more than iron or lead ? In the Chronicles we are told that Solo, mon made silver and gold at Jerusalem as plenteous as stones" and what we have looked on as Eastern hyperbole may in time be a common fact. If one of the precious metals can be manufactured, of course the others can. and the only limit to the amount of gold and silver will be in the supply of cheaper metals ana in the capacity of the machinery or pro- cesses used
 Are We to have a real Golden Age?