Event Description

The next SHAC Seminar (Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry) will host Megan Piorko on “The Long Life of Fasciculus Chemicus: Early American Reception of Seventeenth-century Alchemical Texts”.

What can the long lives of alchemical texts tell us about early American interest in and understanding of seventeenth-century alchemy? This talk will follow Arthur Dee’s hand-press book Fasciculus Chemicus (1631/1650) across the Atlantic Ocean to explore its alchemical reception through two separate early American lenses. The first example is Ben Franklin’s personal library and his collecting practices of this and other seventeenth-century alchemical tracts. The second is an 1855 account of an anonymous American army officer purchasing and reacting to a copy of Fasciculus Chemicus. These two historical vignettes show the ways in which seventeenth-century alchemical knowledge was collected and reconstructed in early American settings.

Thursday 18 February 2021, 17:00 GMT

Source: https://www.ambix.org/

 

 

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