At the time, gold and mercury saw heavy use in alchemy recipes. Tycho, inspired by the Swiss physician Paracelsus, used these ...

Principe mixed specially prepared mercury and gold into a buttery lump ... on an idea that was “actually widespread in earlier alchemical sources,” Newman writes. The concept that matter ...

Alchemical authors frequently employed a riddling ... Eventually, he produced a "sophic mercury" in which gold could be made to dissolve and "vegetate"—forming tree-like growths.

belonged to Mercury.” Brahe and English physicist-mathematician Isaac Newton were some of the canonical figures of the Scientific Revolution who engaged in alchemy, said Principe, the Johns Hopk ...

the dragon in flames is a symbol of fire and calcination (breaking down a substance by heating or burning it); dragons with wings represent the volatile principle (mercury); dragons without wings ...