Gehennical Fire: The Lives of George Starkey, an American Alchemist in the Scientific Revolution

193 Pages·1994·9.98 MB·English

by  William Newman

Gehennical Fire
“This is the true Ignis Gehennae, for it Eclipseth the
light of the Bodies, and makes them become black as
Pitch; which is a symbol of Hell, and for its Cimmerian
darkness is by many of the Wisemen called Hell.”
— George Starkey, Ripley Reviv’d
A
- i f . ^
t y/f-cs- ^
I y^ -^ . ^ V, Gehennical Fire
The Lives of George Starkey,
': V .. ‘ an American Alchemist
f - - “* ' - . j^- -'v
* t ^ p in the Scientific Revolution
P-. - '-.: ..
/ ' 'f* S /
'•>
: '< \ :rS -' *' ?
W i l l i a m R. N e w m a n
r l \ =
sn
i
S i » » 8 * :a t . f ,ah- Harvard University Press
Cambridge, Massachusetts
'^nroed.^ fo r T^ U iam Ci>0pe4' a t tfu - F/r,- London, England
T5S52Sr75W
1994
Figure 1. The locked door of the alchem ical secret, surrounded by traditional sayings
(dicta) relating to the alchem ical magnum opus. From Eirenaeus Philalethes’ collected
com m entary on the fifteenth-century George Ripley, Ripley Reviv’d (London, 1 6 7 8 ).
Copyright © 1994 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States o f America
To Marleen, Emily, and Ben
This book is printed on acid-free paper, and its binding materials
have been chosen for strength and durability.
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Newman, William R.
Gehennical fire ; the lives of George Starkey, an American
alchemist in the scientific revolution / William R. Newman,
p. cm.
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 0-674-34171-6 (acid-free)
1. Starkey, George, 1627-1665. 2. Alchemists— England— Biography.
3. Alchemy— History. 4. Science— England— History— 17th century.
I. Title.
QD24.S73N49 1994
540M '12'092— dc20 94-9508
[B] CIP
Contents
Acknowledgments ix
A Note on Terminology XI
Introduction 1
1 Starkey in America 14
2 Arcana Maiora; The Hartlib Years (1650-1654) 54
3 The Background to Starkey’s Chymistry 92
4 Revelation and Concealment: The Writings of Philalethes 115
5 A Sonne of Contention: 1655-1665 170
6 Philalethes in Context 209
7 Isaac Newton and Eirenaeus Philalethes 228
Appendix I Starkey’s Addresses in England, 1650-1665 247
Appendix II An Autobiographical Note by George Starkey 248
Appendix III Missing Starkey Manuscripts 252
Appendix IV Robert Boyle’s “Excuses of Philaletha” 254
Appendix V A Bibliography of Starkey’s Writings 256
Abbreviations 275
Notes 277
Index 339
Illustrations
1 Frontispiece of Ripley Reviv’d ii
Following page 164:
2 The star regulus of antimony
Acknowledgments
3 (A-G) Illustrations from the Opera omnia of Philalethes
4 Frontispiece of Pyrotechnia ofte Vuur-stuck-Kunde
5 The tomb of Lionel Lockyer
6 An advertisement for Lockyer’s Pill
7 Excerpt from Newton’s 1678/9 letter to Boyle
8 Frontispiece of Nathan Lacy’s De podagra
First thanks go to I. Bernard Cohen, who suggested that I submit a book on
George Starkey to Harvard University Press and who encouraged its pro­
duction in many ways. But the initial project predates my professional
involvement with the History of Science. As an undergraduate, I was
fortunate enough to work with three outstanding scholars in the fields of
literature and science— Harold Jantz, who wrote on Philalethes (Starkey’s
alias in alchemical literature), Elizabeth Sewell, and O. T. Benfey— all of
whom tolerated my youthful enthusiasm for the subject. The “American
philosopher,” as Starkey’s contemporaries referred to his persona, has in­
trigued me ever since.
My fascination with this subject stems also from the beautiful treatment
of Starkey given by George Lyman Kittredge in a seminal article written
three-quarters of a century ago. Kittredge’s unpublished notes, resident in
the Harvard University Archives, have proven to be an almost inexhaustible
source of Starkeiana.
I also owe thanks to more immediate sources, in particular to Lawrence
Principe, who offered a number of important alterations to my understanding
of Starkey’s chemistry. Chapters 4 and 5 owe a particular debt to Principe’s
knowledge and goodwill. Monika Asztalos, Martha Baldwin, Peter Buck,
Harold J. Cook, Lorraine Daston, Mordechai Feingold, Karin Figala, Peter
Galison, Owen Gingerich, Rupert Hall, Robert Halleux, Michael Hunter, John
Murdoch, P B. Newman, Katherine Park, A. I. Sabra, Steven Shapin, Alan
Shapiro, Pamela Smith, Abha Sur, Richard Westfall, and Walter Woodward
all read part or all of the book and provided valuable comments.
X • Acknowledgments
Others whose contributions helped me include Ulrich Neumann, who
located essential German documents; John Young, who helped retrieve
valuable material from the Hartlib papers in Sheffield, and Annabel Gregory,
who expanded the shorthand of Starkey’s fragmentary diary. I also ac­
knowledge the help of Susanna Akerman, Ann Blair, Allan Brandt, Gerald
Beasley, Theresa Bridgeman, Antonio Clericuzio, Anthony Grafton, Anita
Guerrini, Steven Harris, Miles Jackson, Lynn Joy, Richard Kennedy, Tzvi
Langermann, Dorothy Porter, E M. Rattansi, Timothy Raylor, Sandra Rouja, A Note on Terminology
Thomas Siegel, andjohn Symons, from whose advice I benefited in a variety
of ways.
Among the libraries and archives to whom special thanks are owed I must
include the Harvard University Archives, Houghton Library, the British
Library, the library of the Royal Society, the Bermuda Archives, the library of
the University of Glasgow, the Wellcome Institute, and the Massachusetts
Historical Society.
The research and writing of this book were underwritten by the following
The reader of this book may at first be perplexed by my use of the terms
grant-giving organizations (in chronological order): the Warburg Institute,
alchemy and chemistry and the now archaic chymistry. But there is good
the American Philosophical Society, the National Science Foundation
reason to retain all three words. The Latin terms chymia and alchymia
(Grant DIR-8808685), Stonehill College, Harvard University, and the Dib-
(alternatively chemia and alchemid), from whence we get our modern
ner Institute.
names, were rigorously synonymous until the seventeenth century, as
Robert Halleux, a profound historian of this subject, has asserted.^ Only
during the Enlightenment were they severed once and for all, as when the
French chemist E. E Geoffroy wrote his blistering Supercheries concemant la
pierre philosophale of 1722.^
The two terms were still widely interchangeable throughout the seven­
teenth century. This presents problems to the modern reader, for most of us
think we already know what alchemy meant— the transmutation of base
metals into gold. Chemistry, too, will have a well-defined sense to most
modern readers, and one that has little to do with metallic transmutation.
The reader may find it an abrupt shock, then, to consider the definition that
George Starkey, the subject of this book, gives to alchemy He derives the
term from a fusion of the two Greek words hals, or “salt,” and chemeia,
which he took to mean “separation,” for to Starkey, alchemy “is the Art of
separating S alts .T h ere is nothing about either transmutation or even gold
in Starkey’s definition, though these subjects were seldom far from his
thoughts, and if alchemy means the separation of salts, then chemistry to
him means “separation” proper.
Starkey’s definition is idiosyncratic, but indicative of the interpretive
difficulties that arise when we encounter the words of another era. I ask the
XI
Xll A Note on Terminology A Note on Terminology Xlll
reader, therefore, to forget any preconceptions about the meaning of al­ The terms that we have considered so far were all capable of being treated
chemy and chemistry, for I will use them interchangeably. In order to ease the either as synonyms for “the art,” alchemy, or its practitioners. But there is a
way toward this lethean feat, and to offer a reminder that the next three- peculiar subject of the art that also needs elucidation. I refer to the term
hundred-odd pages are set in the seventeenth century rather than our own, philosophical mercury or sophic mercury. In most cases this means the “first
I shall occasionally employ the archaic term chymistry. By this I mean the matter” of the philosophers’ stone, the initial ingredient from which the
totality of chemical/alchemical technology and theory as it existed in early alchemist must make that summum bonum. As such it need not mean
modern Europe. This odd word has the virtue of combining all the conno­ metallic quicksilver at all, for alchemists were recommending the most
tations of alchemy and chemistry into one convenient package, at once varied substances to make their marvelous agent of transmutation. Dew,
exotic, crude, and a bit ungainly, which is exactly as most early modem humus, urine, and a host of other substances formed the basis of many a
readers found it. recipe for the “great elixir,” and so any of these could be viewed as either a
A related problem occurs in the word iatrochemistry, literally “medical “philosophical mercury” or as the source thereof. But the complications do
chemistry.” This term is derived from the Latin iatrochymia (or iatrochemia) not end here. Many early modern alchemists had adopted the view of the
or the more common chymiatria (or chemiatria), which were probably thirteenth-century writer Geber (or pseudo-Geber), whose Summa perjec-
coined either by the Swiss physician Paracelsus von Hohenheim or his tionis asserts that the philosophers’ stone must be fabricated from the very
sixteenth-century followers."^ Paracelsus pioneered a reform of medicine substance that nature herself uses in making metals. The term philosophical
that shifted the therapeutic emphasis away from botanical cures to miner­ mercury, then, could designate not merely the “first matter” of the elixir but
als. Since he employed the gamut of alchemical technology as a means of the prima materia or basic ingredient of metals in general. If one also
purifying his medicaments, his reform was viewed rightly as an incorpora­ believed, as many did, that all things derive their origin from a “uniform
tion of alchemy with medicine. The reader should be forewarned that the catholic matter,” the philosophical mercury could even be the fundamental
majority of iatrochemical physicians inherited from alchemy not only the “chaos” out of which all things are made.
simple technologies of distillation and refining but also an enduring belief To make matters even more confusing, early modern alchemical writers
in the agent of metallic transmutation, the philosophers’ stone or elixir. not only employed an obscure terminology but also used a variety of
Indeed, it was a common early modern belief that the philosophers’ stone graphic symbols for their substances and apparatus. Taken in part from the
was a cure not only for base metals but for the ailing body of man. When signs for the planets, these symbols varied somewhat in meaning and form
the term iatrochemistry appears in this book, therefore, let no one assume among different authors and over time. The following list defines only those
that it refers simply to the disinterested production of pharmaceuticals. As symbols used in this book, which are a small subset of a greater whole.
a chemical physician one could be— and usually was— an alchemist in every
sense. aaa Amalgam, amalgamate 0 Regulus of antimony (men
antimony)
Another term requiring explanation is pyrotechny. During the seven­ Antimony trisulfide (Sb2S3)
5
teenth century, this word did not necessarily mean the art of making 0 Salt (NaCl)
? Copper
fireworks. It had a specific meaning popularized by the famous Belgian
C Silver
X Crucible
interpreter of Paracelsus, J. B. Van Helmont. To Van Helmont, pyrotechny
Spiritus vini, ethyl alcohol
A Fire
meant the manipulation of matter by means of fire. Since most alchemical
* Star regulus of antimony
techniques employed heating, Helmontian pyrotechny was in effect a syno­ G Gold
(crystalline Sb) or sal
nym for alchemy. And since alchemy itself was more or less synonymous
d Iron
ammoniac (NH4CI)
with chymiatria, by virtue of the curative quality of the philosophers’ stone,
Lead Sulfur
the “philosopher by fire” or pyrotechnist was also perforce an iatrochemist.
? Mercury Tartar (KHC4H4O6)
“Philosopher by fire,” with its strong experimental connotations, was an
intentionally polemical epithet directed against academic learning. As such 0 Niter (KNO3) Tin
it became the favorite by-line of that arch-invectivist George Starkey. 5 Ounce V Water
XIV A Note on Terminology
A final term that we must introduce is the word alchahest, as Starkey
spelled it, or alkahest, in its more usual form. The alchahest was an alchemi­
cal desideratum of dubious etymology popularized, though not invented,
by Van Helmont. Paracelsus had already been seeking a substance that
could reduce matter into its ultimate constituents, and his De renovatione et
restoratione asserts that there is a sal circulatum— a term used also by Van
Helmont as a synonym for the alchahest— which can return substances to
their primum ens or primordial substance.^ Van Helmont, moreover, drew a Gehennical Fire
parallel between the analytical abilities of the alchahest and the purgative
powers of hellfire. As a result, the alchahest acquired the cognomen of ignis
gehennae, “Gehennical fire,” from the Old Testament name for Hell, Ge­
henna.^ By extension of this conceit, Gehennical fire could refer to the
philosophical mercury that was supposed to be the first ingredient in the
quest for the philosophers’ stone, since alchemists often maintained that
the philosophers’ mercury began its work by decomposing gold into its first
principles. The fact that George Starkey spent most of his adult life in a
quest for the alchahest and its cousin, the true philosophical mercury, has
supplied me with the title of this book: nor is hellfire an inappropriate trope
for Starkey’s life.
The reader will encounter other “terms of art” throughout this book. But
as these are of less general use, we shall restrict our explanations of them to
their actual occurrence.
Introduction
Why should anyone choose to write a book about George Starkey? To judge
by the work of contemporary historians, he was an obscure figure indeed.
Despite his having been a colonial American scientist, Starkey receives no
entry at all in the Biographical Dictionary of American Science, which pur­
ports to cover the seventeenth through the nineteenth centuries, nor is he
found in the Dictionary of American Biography.^ While R. P. Stearns’s
authoritative Science in the British Colonies of America does mention Starkey,
it limits his representation to four lines out of seven-hundred-odd pages.^
As Stearns notes, Starkey was a native of Bermuda who received his A.B.
from Harvard College in 1646. He immigrated to London in 1650 and
became a prominent physician there, only to die in the great plague of 1665.
During these years in England Starkey wrote several influential medical
works that continued to arouse interest into the eighteenth century. But
this is only a small part of his extraordinary story, for Stearns and other
historians of American science have failed to realize that Starkey in fact led
two lives.
Thanks to the researches of George Lyman Kittredge at the beginning of
this century, and to later work by Harold Jantz and R. S. Wilkinson, it has
long been suspected that Starkey secretly penned a number of influential
works on alchemy, printed under the name of Eirenaeus Philalethes— liter­
ally, “A Peaceful Lover of Truth.” ^ What had hitherto seemed probable is
now a matter of fact, for an analysis of Starkey’s letters has recently allowed
me to prove that Starkey and Eirenaeus Philalethes were indeed one."^
But Eirenaeus Philalethes was more than a mere pseudonym, at least in
the usual sense. Not content merely to adopt the name of Philalethes,
Introduction
Gehennical Fire
Starkey went so far as to spread elaborate stories of his alter ego, claiming fitting that the reader first encounter the fabulous Philalethes in his chosen
that Philalethes was a friend of his, still living in New England, whose name milieu, in the company of the great adepts of the seventeenth century.
Starkey was under oath not to reveal. The secretive Philalethes went by the
cognomen philosophus Americanus, but his identity remained unknown
Elias Artista, Alexander Seton, and the Transmutation History
even to Starkey’s closest friends.^ This “American philosopher” was reputed
to have performed miraculous feats in New England, such as restoring the Between 1652 and 1658 the radical Fifth Monarchist Mary Rand predicted
hair and teeth of an aged lady and bringing a withered peach tree to produce that “the philosophers stone” would become “speedily vulgar” in the com­
new fruit.^ Most important of all, however, Starkey broadcast the rumor ing reign of Christ on earth. It was thus that an idea bom of late Hellenism
that Philalethes was an adept— a possessor of the alchemical philosophers’ and elaborated in the shadowy enclaves of Ismaili alchemy came to be
stone, the agent of metallic transmutation. In this way Starkey managed to appropriated by the millenarians of seventeenth-century England. But this
create a mythological persona of such charisma that long after his creator’s reference to the promise of alchemical riches was not an isolated instance.
death many believed him still to be alive and performing transmutations in Although alchemy had been a relatively marginal discipline in the occiden­
the “English Islands or Plantations” in America.^ tal Middle Ages, it exploded into the mainstream of early modern Europe
The works written by Starkey under the pseudonymous epithet of with a catastrophic v io len ce .T h e philosophers’ stone, an agent of trans­
Eirenaeus Philalethes were spectacularly successful. His most popular mutation promising to “perfect” ten times, one hundred times, even a
work, the Introitus apertus ad occlusum regis palatium (An open entrance to thousand times its own weight of base metal, became the cause cdehre of the
the closed palace of the king), went through at least nine Latin editions, not age of gold.^^
to mention its many translations into vernacular languages.^ Collected into But the medieval sages who had discovered this marvelous instrument of
Philalethes’ Opera omnia (Complete works) in 1695, the Introitus was God’s beneficence had also learned of His stinginess in bestowing it. Indeed,
reprinted as late as 1749.^ Philalethes’ works were known to G. W. Leib- the thirteenth-century Summa perfectionis of pseudo-Geber asserts that the
niz,^*^ commented by Robert B o y le ,a n d esteemed by Isaac Newton. In­ philosophers’ stone is a donum dei— a gift of God— which He “extends to
deed, on the basis of the latter’s attentions, Philalethes has been called by and withdraws from whom He wishes.”^® Suddenly, in the seventeenth
one Newton scholar “the last great philosophical alchemist. It is highly century, it seemed that the Father of Lights was about to raise His veil of
likely that Starkey’s output under the guise of Philalethes makes him the mystery and illumine not only his chosen, the “sons of wisdom,” but even
most widely read American scientist before Benjamin Franklin. the enthusiastic followers of Mary Rand.
How can it be that a man of Starkey’s humble origins and provincial How is it that alchemy acquired its association with prophecy? There are
background achieved such success? Clearly the answer to this question strong medieval precedents for the connection, but for us the story begins
cannot be had without a serious revision both of contemporary views about with Paracelsus von Hohenheim (1493-1541), an iconoclastic Swiss physi­
the role of alchemy in the scientific revolution and about the provinciality cian who is famous for fusing the techniques of alchemy with the aims of
of colonial American science. In the present work we can only make a first medicine to arrive at the discipline of chemiatria— medical chemistry or, as
step toward those goals, but without laying the foundations we shall it is usually called, iatrochemistry.^^ Paracelsus had predicted that sometime
achieve nothing. Let us therefore proceed into the world of rumor and after his death “Helias” or “Elias the Artist” would come and reveal the
intrigue that surrounded successful alchemists of the early modern period. hidden secrets of nature. This “Elias” was of course the prophet Elijah,
A foray into the realm of alchemy will demonstrate the degree to which whose second coming had already been predicted by the Bible. The
the philosophers’ stone had become the idee fixe of the age. Here the reader prophetical tradition of medieval Europe had made Elias a cornerstone of its
will meet Eirenaeus Philalethes in his own environment, a literary world of predictions: hence the twelfth-century prophet Joachim of Fiore had longed
anonymous adepts and their desperate followers, the roiling masses in for his arrival as the opening to an age of renovatioA^ But to Paracelsus, Elias
quest of the philosophers’ stone. A stark contrast exists between this glitter­ was more than a prophet— he was a magus and alchemist who would
ing and artificial world and that of Starkey’s upbringing, the barely hewn perform miracles of transmutation.^^ In his work Von den naturlichen Din-
wilderness of Bermuda and New England, discussed in Chapter 1. It is only gen, Paraclesus says the following: