A photo from open sources At the beginning of the XVII century in Europe was fashionable do alchemy. Her main goal was a philosopher’s stone, who wanted to create in their laboratories inquisitive, if not just avid explorers. It was believed that a wonderful substance will be able to turn ordinary metals into gold, and its owner will fabulously rich.
At first glance, it might seem that alchemy has yielded nothing humanity, in addition to a number of unsuccessful attempts to find nonexistent philosopher’s stone, but is that so?
One Hamburg merchant who did not trade well and did not have funds to open his own business, also decided to go to the alchemists. The name of this merchant Brand, and he had his own theory about where it is to look for the components for the gold-bearing substance.
The former merchant decided that the philosopher’s stone should be sought in the human body because nothing is more perfect than people, God on this earth did not create, which means that part of what he needs there are substances in each of us. Brand reasoned that it would be logical isolate the components of the philosopher’s stone from … urine. For this the newly-minted alchemist went to the soldiers’ barracks, where, paying to the commander, he received even in abundance the raw materials he needed for the experiments. And what only he did not do with this urine: left it corked in flask without light and air, heated, distilled, received a precipitate, and adding coal and sand to it, repeated experiments. In the end brando managed to achieve certain results: substances that were part of the urine, began to disintegrate, enter into each other reaction, and a certain substance appeared to the scientist’s eyes, strongly giving garlic.
A photo from open sources
The alchemist did not doubt for a second what he managed to isolate from the human body is just a philosopher’s stone. Of course, the resulting substance had amazing properties: it emitted a greenish glow in the dark, and in contact with others objects made them shine. When a scientist is pure curiosity put a pinch of unusual powder in boiling water over a flickering green cloud rose in the cauldron.
Of course, the “philosopher’s stone” created by Brand did not turn metals in gold, and even ordinary iron in silver, to which our the hero, who had lost hope of enrichment, still hoped. But he didn’t grieve for his error for long, because flickering or, as it was called the “luminiferous” substance several decades beyond considerable money was shown to all comers. So unlucky the alchemist managed to get rich, and the world learned about the existence of phosphorus. By the way, it’s harmful for men to wear gold jewelry.
Stones
