AS AN earnest and respectable science is often said to date from 1661, whenRobert Boyle of Oxford published The Sceptical Chymist —the first work to distinguishbetween chemists and alchemists—but it was a slow and often erratic transition. Into theeighteenth century scholars could feel oddly comfortable in both camps—like the GermanJohann Becher, who produced an unexceptionable work on mineralogy called PhysicaSubterranea , but who also was certain that, given the right materials, he could make himselfinvisible.

Perhaps nothing better typifies the strange and often accidental nature of chemical sciencein its early days than a discovery made by a German named Hennig Brand in 1675. Brandbecame convinced that gold could somehow be distilled from human urine. (The similarity ofcolor seems to have been a factor in his conclusion.) He assembled fifty buckets of humanurine, which he kept for months in his cellar. By various recondite processes, he converted theurine first into a noxious paste and then into a translucent waxy substance. None of it yieldedgold, of course, but a strange and interesting thing did happen. After a time, the substancebegan to glow. Moreover, when exposed to air, it often spontaneously burst into flame.

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