Part II. People have long had a lust for gold, and in those days gold was considered to be the ultimate and most perfect metal formed in nature

People have long had a lust for gold, and in those days gold was considered to be the ultimate and most perfect metal formed in nature. Thousands of years ago people valued gold as a rare and beautiful substance. They also understood that gold had a unique ability to resist decay and corrosion. The concepts found in alchemical practice throughout the world, aurifiction and aurifaction. Auri-fiction, or gold-faking, which is the imitation of gold or otherpreciousmaterials – is associated with technicians and artisans. Aurifaction, or gold-making, is 'the belief that it is possible to make gold (or "a gold", or an artificial "gold") indistinguishable from or as good as (if not better than) natural gold, from other different substances'. Thus, the alchemists tried to change the base metals such as iron, zinc, copper, lead into gold. They searched for a universal solvent to transmute these metals into gold.

Since there was no known any acid or other substance that could damage gold they thought that gold had a quality of performance that could be transmitted to humans. Therefore, every medicine that fought ageing contained gold as an essential ingredient and doctors urged people to drink from gold cups to prolong life.

This universal desire for gold made alchemy a formal discipline in the first century A.D. It first appeared among Greek scholars, then spread to eastern Mediterranean countries, and finally to Spain and Italy in the 12th century. Though the attempts to produce gold from other substances was the original and central purpose of alchemy, a number of physician-alchemists in Europe in the Middle Ages tried to produce medicines that were not dependent on gold or related to it.

They worked to produce medicines and spirits from the other raw materials and in this way improved methods of separating ele­ments by distillation. For example, in the 13th century Thaddeus of Florence identified the medical benefits of alcohol distillates taken internallyand applied locally. Paracelsus (1493 – 1541), the German-Swiss physician and alchemist, was the first person to unite medicine with chemistry through his use of remedies that contained mercury, sulphur, iron, and copper sulphate. This led to steam distillation and improved equipment. The manipulations carried out in alchemical laboratories not only discovered many facts of nature but paved the way systematic experimentation that is characteristic of modern chemistry.

Unfortunately, much of their work was done secretly because of the mysticism that shrouded their activity and very few records and papers remained.

8. Match the synonyms in columns A and B: