Talk:Johann von Löwenstern-Kunckel

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The comment(s) below were originally left at Talk:Johann von Löwenstern-Kunckel/Comments, and are posted here for posterity. Following several discussions in past years, these subpages are now deprecated. The comments may be irrelevant or outdated; if so, please feel free to remove this section.

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The original article portrayed Kunckel as some sort of antagonist to alchemy. Nothing farther from the truth. Denial of the Helmontian concept of the "alkahest" does not = antagonist to alchemy (for example, Johann Seger von Weidenfeld, another late 17th century staunch defender of alchemy, also had little trouble dismissing Helmont's "alkahest" as nonsense.) And neither does denying that sulfur is any "principle" of metals constitute a rejection of alchemy. In at least two of Kunckel's works ("An Experimental Confirmation of Chymical Philosophy" and "Laboratorium Chymicum") he several times openly claims to have been successful at making artificial gold and silver. Scans of the 1705 English edition of the first mentioned text can be found here:

http://dewey.library.upenn.edu/sceti/printedbooksNew/index.cfm?PagePosition=1&textID=pyrotechnical

Which all interested readers are most cordially invited to peruse. In this work there are at least 3 "Kunckelian" transmutation claims:

1- A special "metallic salt" that Kunckel prepares with an intense and prolonged temperature has the property to turn some amount of mercury into silver (chapter IV, pp.16-17)

2- The white precipitate of silver (silver chloride) can somehow be used to "fix" some lead into silver (chapter VIII, page 73.)

3- With a very long process of repeated cementations with salt and fusions, some part of a given silver mass can be turned into gold (pp. 174-175.)

Last edited at 09:18, 24 June 2008 (UTC). Substituted at 20:03, 29 April 2016 (UTC)

Talk:Johann von Löwenstern-Kunckel

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