Essais chimiques d’eckartshausen

On the nature of Gold and Silver

Sulfur is Man, arsenic is Woman, say the ancients. Sulfur produces the red metal and arsenic the white metal.

But it is necessary to have a more precise conception of sulfur and arsenic.

We should not understand by these names ordinary sulfur and arsenic, but those of the philosophers.

The sulfur of the philosophers resides in the coal; it is the substance of fire¹².

The arsenic of the philosophers is phosphoric acid, Hence the garlic odor of phosphorus.
Sulfur steals its acid from; arsenic. The charcoal robs the acid of the phosphorus. These experiences attest to the kinship of these bodies.

EXPERIENCE

When you take a fine charcoal dust, place it in a porcelain cup, moisten it with phosphoric acid and expose it to the summer sun, then we melt the mass by means of a magnifying glass for some time, we obtain a very beautiful little gold leaf. But this again vanishes into the air, into phosphoric acid, or rather "auric" acid (Galdsäure).

In this phosphoric aerial gold, only the compacting earth is missing so that we have a real metal. This experiment sufficiently proves that all metallity consists simply in a union of the substance of fire with the substance of light, which are found in charcoal and phosphoric acid.

OTHER EXPERIENCE

I observed in the phosphorus that its exterior is white and its interior reddish¹³. This observation led me to think that the white part of phosphorus could have an entirely different action than the red part.

So once I handled my charcoal powder with the white phosphorus that I simply detached from the surface; I placed it in the sun and let my magnifying glass work on it. I got a little silver leaf when the white was heavier than the charcoal; but if

3. 
   The charcoal with which we heat our stoves has burnt it and has coarse sulfur. It has stored solar energy, and that is why the author can make it an analog substitute for true sulfur. Likewise, the arsenic of the philosophers or the Fire-Water resides in common phosphorus only by analogy. In the following experiment, the “coal dust” could well be simply, the subjectum artis, already qualified for the Labors of Hercules.
   
4. 
   What shows that this very real experiment is not more "chemical" than the preceding one and that the substances which it describes are not the bodies known by this name, is that its phosphorus is white in appearance. outside and red inside. It is easy to understand that Pierre Mercurielle is white on the outside, but that it contains its virtual red sulfur, invisible, on the outside.
   

I used a larger quantity of charcoal than white matter, I obtained a small gold leaf which, like the other, vanished into the air as acid¹⁴.