I HE arts of the magician and the sor-
cerer, and the use of amulets and
charms, attained great celebrity in
the Dark Ages, nor are they wholly rooted up
at the present day. In modern witchcraft,
magic and sorcery are united and debased ;
while amulets, the knowledge of their potency
having been forgotten, now serve as adornments
for the person, the household, the garden, or the
field. The magician and the sorcerer meddled
with medicine, but their triumphs belong rather
to the recital of the marvellous than to a veri-
table history. It was not until both classes were
united in the alchemist, the parent of immortal
chemistry, that medicine falls under an obligation
to them. Pursued at first from a love of riches.
ALCHEMY AND CHEMISTRY. 91

alchemy gave its first fruits to medicine ; yet
many centuries elapsed before the enormous
power which it discovered was fully recognized
by the physician. During the Dark Ages
alchemy was the ignis fatuus of the philosopher,
luring him ever onward, urging further trial to
compass an impossible achievement, and reward-
ing him occasionally with a discovery of far more
vital consequence than that which the philo-
sopher's stone was imagined to possess. Alchemy
made many good chemists, a few physicians, and
an enormous number of quacks.
