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Dictionary of the History of Ideas

Studies of Selected Pivotal Ideas
  
  
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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


034

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.]