Andreas Libavius and the Transformation of Alchemy: Separating Chemical Cultures with Polemical Fires

What lots of people called chymia in the early seventeenth century was a subject that the physician, alchemist, and schoolteacher Andreas Libavius believed needed sorting out. He called it an art without an art. To establish what sort of thing chymia was would require rebuilding its definitions from the theoretical and practical ground up while cutting back the forest of obscure language and private meaning in which it existed. Libavius took on the job, and in thousands of pages of toughly worded criticism ranging over alchemical, moral, medical, philosophical, and religious topics wielded a polemical blade to huge effect...