17th-century Chemist Quotes

Johann Joachim Becher

Georg Ernst Stahl

John Mayow

The chemists are a strange class of mortals impelled by an almost insane impulse to seek their pleasure among smoke and vapor, soot and flame, poisons and poverty; yet among all these evils I seem to live so sweetly, that may I die if I would change places with the Persian King.

Johann Joachim Becher

Chymia, or Alchemy and Spagyrism, is the art of resolving compound bodies into their principles and of combining these again.

Georg Ernst Stahl

We do not doubt to assert, that air does not serve for the motion of the lungs, but rather to communicate something to the blood...It is very likely that it is the fine nitrous particles, with which the air abounds, that are communicated to the blood through the lungs.

The most valuable and most precious of all Metals is the most useless in Physick, except when considered as an Antidote to Poverty.

Étienne François Geoffroy

The shape and form of Chymical Vessels is almost infinite...

Christopher Glaser

Chymistry is an Art that teaches how to separate the different substances which are found in Mixt Bodies...

[Fire is] the most potent Agent that Nature hath furnished us withal under Heaven, to perform the Anatomy of Mixt Bodies.

Nicasius le Febure