Medical aspects of the late European alchemy.

ABSTRACT

Medical trends in European alchemy are discussed. There existed a direction that in curing illnesses made use of various substances known to alchemists. The origin can be traced back to the 14th century and further development of this trend has later led to iatrochemistry. Beside this, there existed all the time the second direction called alchemical medicine. It searched for miraculous universal medicine using for this purpose approaches known from attempts in metal transmutation. Several examples of the confused world of alchemical medicine are brought.