Book to Note

George Starkey. Alchemical Laboratory Notebooks and Correspondence. Edited by William R. Newman and Lawrence M. Principe. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2004. 378 pp. $80.

Reviewed by Daniel Stolzenberg

What went on in the laboratory of an early modern alchemist? The stereotypical image is of a lone alchemist tending his furnace in search of the philosopher’s stone that will allow him to make gold from lead. It has been hard for historians to reconstruct the reality of alchemical practice on the basis of the texts that have come down to us. Carl Jung’s claim that the alchemist’s crucible was the site of the projection of psychological archetypes rather than physical experimentation still casts a long shadow on the public imagination. Among historians of early modern science, at least, this misconception has been laid to rest, thanks in large part to the editors of this book.

The Alchemical Laboratory Notebooks and Correspondence of George Starkey (also known by his alchemical pseudonym Eirenaeus Philalethes) offers a rare window into the experimental practices of one of the 17th century’s most influential chymical researchers. It presents previously unpublished texts of Starkey’s surviving notebooks as well as letters by Starkey to such notable figures as Robert Boyle, Samuel Hartlib, and John Winthrop, Jr. Most of the texts were written in Latin, and these are printed here with facing English translation and extensive annotations. This material formed the basis of Newman and Principe’s brilliant recent study, Alchemy Tried in the Fire: Starkey, Boyle, and the Fate of Helmontian Chemistry (University of Chicago, 2002), which examined the laboratory collaboration between Starkey and Boyle and demonstrated that alchemical traditions made profound contributions to developments in experimental practice—developments that earlier scholars interpreted as a reaction against alchemy.

The primary sources made accessible in this collection will be of great interest to scholars studying the history of alchemy and chemistry—and indeed to all historians interested in the development of experimental science in early modern Europe.