Medicine and Graeco-Arabic Alchemy by Owsei Temkin

Medicine and Graeco-Arabic Alchemy by Owsei Temkin

At this point, some orientating remarks may be helpful. There is a collection of Greek alchemical writings which date from about 300 to 700 A. D.7 They are attributed to various authors, some of them historical persons, others legendary. Unfortunately, most of the Greek texts are still in an utterly confused state.8 They deal with the sacred art of transmuting lower substances into silver and gold, the avowed aim of alchemy. But as to method, they differ widely from technical recipes to symbolic works of a gnostic character. This alchemy had a Syriac successor, just as Greek science and medicine found their way from about 500 A. D. on into the new garb of Syriac.9 Regarding medicine, the transmission was due to Nestor ian Christians who had their main seat of learning in Gundē Shāpūr in the province of Khõzistãn in southwest Persia, and to Jacobite Christians further west. It is likely that alchemy too was cultivated in the same centers. Between about 750 and 950, medicine underwent a second transformation into Arabic, largely on the basis of preexisting Syriac translations. And alchemy too not only found a home in Arabic civilization but a much greater flowering than ever before.

Rhazes and Jãbir, both writing about 900 A. D., are the two greatest names in the history of Arabic alchemy and, perhaps, of alchemy in the tradition of Graeco-medieval science altogether. We owe to the late Paul Kraús a chronology of the books of the Jābir Collection according to which the earliest only precede the writings of Rhazes.10 Kraus has shown that Jābir's work was inspired by the religious sect of the Ismâilîya and that the alleged relation to Ja'far of the eighth century is a product of IsmaìHya propaganda.11 Moreover, Kraus has made available a selection from the Jābir works 12 which extends our knowledge beyond the treatises previously published.18 On the other hand, Ruska's many publications,14 notably his German translation of one of Rhazes' main alchemical works, the Sirr al - asrãr, the " Secret of Secrets," 15 allows a real insight into the labors of the most chemically minded of the alchemists. We are thus able to compare late Greek alchemy with Arabic alchemy of about 900. This comparison seems to indicate a difference in the relationship to medicine. Rhazes was one of the greatest physicians of all time, famous, above all, as a clinician. The Jābir collection also contains medical works ; 16 whoever the man behind this name may have been, there is little doubt that he was a physician.17 But if we turn to late Greek lists of alleged or real alchemists, we do not find a single outstanding medical name among them.18 

Thus Stephanus is the author of an alchemistic work, in part addressed to the Byzantine emperor Heraclius (610-641 A. D.),10 but his identity with a physician Stephanus of about the same time, who commented on works of Hippocrates and Galen, is quite un- certain.20 It has been widely assumed that the name of Sergius mentioned in the list refers to Sergius of Rēsh'ainā (died 536 A. D.) who visited Alexandria and translated Greek medical and philosophical works into Syriac.21 The oriental tradition ascribes alchemistic works to him 22 and he is quoted by both Rhazes 23 and Jābir.24 However, the genuineness of these works has been doubted 25 and if the doubts were to prove justified, there would be reason to assume that the Syrians and Arabs when coming across the name of one Sergius, identified him with the translator who was so well known to them. At any rate, the lists of authors make it clear that the Greek alchemists considered the rise of their art as something outside of medicine. Even the association with Aristotelian philosophy, so powerful in other branches of Greek science and medicine, seems to have come late. In one list of names, Plato and Aristotle do not figure at all,26 and a philosophical theory in contrast to purely gnostic-hermetic tendencies becomes discernible only with Olympiodorus towards the end of the sixth century.27

An eminent Alexandrian commentator of Plato and Aristotle, Olym- piodorus seems to have made a place for alchemy among philosophical studies.28 Now we know that academic medicine in Alexandria was in contact with Neoplatonic philosophy.29 It would, therefore, not be surprising to find a closer relationship between physicians and alchemists in the generation contemporary with and following upon Olympiodorus, i. e. approximately the generation of Paulus of Aegina. It is indeed worth noting that a Byzantine alchemistic poem, written by one Theophrastus after 600 A. D.,30 appears to be one of the earliest testimonies for a linking of physician and alchemist. Theophrastus starts out with a reference to men who know the nature of all things.81 He accounts briefly for their skill in the various sciences beginning with astrology and then proceeds to medicine. In Browne's translation the passage reads :

 Yet more than this, the causes we reveal

 Of each affliction in the body's frame;

 Experimentally our school explores

 The science, art and ends of medicine,

 With such success that our prognosis shows

 What sicknesses are destined to appear

 And what is best to cure or ward them off ;

 Its findings also lead us to foretell

 An end of life from sickness far from home.

After medicine, Theophrastus discusses the investigation of vegetables, minerals, and animals, and since he speaks about their good and evil, this section may be interpreted as having some pharmacological meaning. Subsequently he turns to the detractors of alchemy and to alchemy itself. Reitzenstein suggested that the author used the name of the great philosopher and scientist. 

The medical passage would then be merely an allusion to Theophrastus' physiological and pathological interests.34 Nevertheless, the poem indicates that around 700 it was no longer considered strange to have the same person cultivate medicine as well as alchemy.35 Such a lowering of the barriers, if it took place, was of academic rather than practical interest, since at this late period Greek alchemy had become a literary art, experimental work having all but ceased. At any rate, we know too little of Greek medicine and of Greek alchemy around the time of the Arabic con- quest of Alexandria to arrive at pertinent conclusions. In both fields the events in the East were beginning to overshadow those in the Byzantine West.

From :
Bulletin of the History of Medicine
Coverage: 1939-2012 (Vol. 7, No. 1 - Vol. 86, No. 4)

Published by: The Johns Hopkins University Press