The Age of Alchemy

The first chemists were Sri Lankan steel forgers in the first century BCE, alchemists who emerged in Roman Egypt, herbalists in Tang Dynasty China, and engineers in eighth-century South America. The Enlightenment is usually credited with the origins of chemistry. But in truth, the science blossomed gradually as early innovators distilled, smelted, forged, and fermented their way through the millennia, blurring science and mysticism in search of answers to life's greatest mysteries. Kit Chapman explores a global quest to achieve immortality, cure all disease, and transmute lead into gold, revealing the stories of how the alchemists first broke new ground and shaped the scientific method.