The Physical Recipe

Two days after Christmas in 1666, an unprepossessing stranger visited Johann Friedrich Schweitzer, physician to the Prince of Orange...  

After some idle conversation, the stranger asked Schweitzer whether he would recognise the 'Philosopher's Stone' if he saw it.  This was an astounding question.  The Philosopher's stone was the goal of the alchemists--a fabled substance that could transmute metals into gold, banish all illness and bestow long and vigorous life.

The visitor produced from his pocket a small ivory box that held 'three ponderous pieces or small lumps... each about the bigness of a small walnut, transparent, of a pale brimstone colour'.  Schweitzer...begged the man to give him just a small piece.  When he was refused, he contrived to scrape a speck beneath his fingernail.

When the visitor had left, promising to return in three weeks and show him 'some curious arts in the fire', Schwitzer hurried to his lab for a crucible.  He melted some lead in it, and then added the tiny piece of stone.  But the metal did not change into gold...

...in exactly three weeks his mysterious visitor was one more at the door.   For a long time the stranger refused to let Schweitzer take another look at the marvellous stone, but at last 'he gave me a crumb as big as a rape or turnip seed, saying, receive this small parcel of the greatest treasure of the world, which truly few kings or princes have ever known or seen.'

Most ungratefully, Schweitzer protested that this was not sufficient to transmute as much as four grains into gold; wherupon the stranger took it back, cut it in half and flung one part in the fire, exclaiming:  'It is yet sufficient for thee!"

Schweitzer then confessed his former theft, and described his lack of success.  The stranger laughed and said:  "Thou art more dextrous to commit theft than to apply thy medicine; for if thou hadst only wrapped up thy stolen pray in yellow wax, to preserve it from the arising fumes of lead, it would have penetrated to the bottom of the lead, and transmuted it to gold.

He promised to return at nine the next morning... But the next day he came not, nor ever since... 

...late that night my wife...came soliciting   and vexing me to make experiment...saying to me, unless this be done, I shall have no rest nor sleep all this night... She being so earnest, I commanded a fire to be made--thinking, alas, not this man (though so divine in discourse) found guilty of falsehood...My wife wrapped the said matter in wax, and I cut half an ounce or six drams of old lead, and put [it] into a crucible in the fire, which being melted, my wife put in the said Medicine made up in a small pill or button, which presently made such a hissing and bubbling in its perfect operation, that within a quarter of an hour all the mass of lead was transmuted into the...finest gold.