Showing results by author "Roger Bacon" in All Categories

Roger Bacon was born in England in 1219, and while he is primarily remembered as a philosopher, linguist, educator and scientist, he also spent a fair amount of time exploring the art of alchemy. The Mirror of Alchemy is one of the many texts he produced on the subject during his lifetime.

This treatise deals with the practice of alchemy in medicine, and the use of antimony and lead in particular. Roger Bacon provides the recipe for processing antimony to make the famous red oil of the philosophers. In Bacon’s opinion, this elixir was efficacious against a wide array of afflictions like fever, plague, gout, and leprosy.

The Mirror of Alchemy is a short alchemical manual, known in Latin as Speculum Alchemiae. Translated in 1597, it was only the second alchemical text printed in the English language. Long ascribed to Roger Bacon, the work is more likely the product of an anonymous author who wrote between the 13th and the 15th centuries.