BIBLIOGRAPHY
The standard source for Greek alchemy is the Catalogue
des manuscrits alchimiques Grecs edited by J.
Bidez, F.
Cumont, J. L. Heiberg, O. Lagercrantz, et al., 8 vols.
(Brussels, 1924-32). Earlier, but still useful is the Collection
des anciens alchimistes Grecs by M. P.
Berthelot and
C. E. Rouelle, 3 vols. (Paris, 1887-88). Recent editions
of
Chinese alchemical texts include Alchemy, Medicine
and
Religion in the China of A.D. 320. The
Nei P'ien of Ko Hung,
trans. and edited by James R. Ware
(Cambridge, Mass.,
1966), and Nathan Sivin, Chinese
Alchemy: Preliminary
Studies (Cambridge, Mass., 1968). A
collection of Arabic
and Syriac texts will be found in M. P. Berthelot,
La chimie
au moyen âge, 3
vols. (Paris, 1893). The latter work should
be supplemented with the
numerous studies of Julius Ruska
on all aspects of Islamic alchemy and
the intensive study
of Paul Kraus, Jābir
ibn Hayyān, 2 vols. (Cairo, 1942-43).
Basic
collected editions of the Latin alchemical texts in-
clude the six-volume Theatrum
chemicum published by
Lazarus Zetzner (Strassburg
1659-61) and the two-volume
Bibliotheca chemica curiosa edited by Jean
Jacques Manget
(Geneva, 1702). The most extensive German collection
is
the Deutsches Theatrum Chemicum
prepared by Friedrich
Roth-Scholtz, 3 vols. (Nuremberg, 1728-32). The
standard
French collection is the Bibliothèque des philosophes chi-
miques prepared by Jean Maugin de Richebourg, 4
vols.
(Paris, 1741-54). The most extensive collection of
alchemical
poetry in English is that of Elias Ashmole, Theatrum Che-
micum
Britannicum (London, 1652), reprinted with an intro.
by
A. G. Debus (New York, 1967). The standard edition of
the works of
Paracelsus is that of Karl Sudhoff and Wilhelm
Matthiessen, Sämtliche Werke, 15 vols. (Munich and
Berlin,
1922-33), and the collected works of van Helmont went
through numerous editions in several languages from 1648
to 1707.
Bibliographies of alchemical texts date from an early
period, but the
two standard lists are J. Ferguson, Biblio-
theca Chemica, 2
vols. (Glasgow, 1906), and Denis I. Duveen,
Bibliotheca Alchemica et Chemica (London,
1949). A survey
of recent scholarship in the field will be found in
Allen G.
Debus, “The Significance of the History of Early
Chemis-
try,” Cahiers d'Histoire Mondiale, 9 (1965), 39-58, and
ex-
tensive bibliographies including
recent research will be
found in R. P. Multhauf's The
origins of Chemistry (London,
1966), pp. 355-89, and Mircea
Eliade's The Forge and the
Crucible (New York,
1962), pp. 186-204. Eliade updated the
latter bibliography in his “The Forge and the
Crucible: A
Postscript,”
History of
Religions,
8 (1968), 74-88. For a
bibliography of Paracelsus
and the later Paracelsians see
Karl Sudhoff,
Bibliographia Paracelsica (Berlin, 1894; re-
print Graz, 1958), and “Ein Beitrag zur
Bibliographie der
Paracelsisten im 16. Jahrhundert,”
Centralblatt für Biblio-
thekswesen,
10 (1893), 316-26, 385-407. Recent research in
this field is covered by the
Paracelsus-Bibliographie
1932-
1960 mit einem Verzeichnis
neu entdeckter Paracelsus-
Handschriften (
1900-1960),
compiled by Karl-Heinz
Weimann (Wiesbaden, 1963). In these
bibliographies the
reader is directed particularly to the works of
Ernst Darm-
staedter, Allen G. Debus,
Mircea Eliade, Wilhelm Ganzen-
muller,
Gerald J. Gruman, E. J. Holmyard, C. G. Jung,
Hermann Kopp, Edmund O.
von Lippmann, R. P. Multhauf,
A. Leo Oppenheim, Walter Pagel, J. R.
Partington, P. Ray,
John Read, Julius Ruska, H. J. Sheppard, John
Maxson
Stillman, Frank Sherwood Taylor, and R. Campbell Thomp-
son.
ALLEN G. DEBUS
[See also Allegory; Creation in Religion;
Experimental
Sci-
ence in the Middle Ages;
Hermeticism; Islamic Conception;
Macrocosm;
Neo-Platonism.]
