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Bruce T. Moran. Andreas Libavius and the Transformation of Alchemy: Separating Chemical Cultures with Polemical Fire. Sagamore Beach, Mass.: Science History Publications/USA, 2007. viii + 344 pp. Ill. $49.95 (978-0-88135-395-2).
The realm of early modern alchemy and chemistry (or chymistry) has probably been as thorny and arduous for historians as it was for its own practitioners. The subject regards both the practical and philosophical, and sundry voices engaged the murky domain, from Pico della Mirandola to Robert Boyle and from Paracelsus to Isaac Newton. We can thus be grateful for Bruce T. Moran's illuminating study, Andreas Libavius and the Transformation of Alchemy. Moran shows that Libavius (c. 1550-1616), the German schoolteacher and physician, merged the Latinate alchemical tradition with the sound reasoning of Aristotelianism. He sought to make chymistry a credible and independent university discipline by removing its magical and esoteric components and refining its bewildering vocabulary, tainted by quacks and Paracelsians. Moran masterfully captures the story by scrutinizing numerous discourses of chymia, as Libavius called the chemical enterprise. Unlike many other analyses of Libavius, the study does not rely merely on Libavius's famous Alchemia (1597) but, rather, focuses on his letters, polemical treatises, medical and chemical commentaries, a 1606 amended version of Alchemia, and copious...