Gabriella yawned as she waited for all of her students to arrive, she hadn't gotten much sleep as she had been prepping practically all night. An when things finally started to die down she couldn't seem to get one particular person out of her mind and that only seemed to annoy her. She pushed that person aside as the bell chimed, indicating that students would be arriving soon. "Hello class, please take your seats as quickly, we don't have a lot of time today to cover everything on my schedule. Please take out your quills and parchment, you'll need to take notes." Gabriella paused for a moment then continued, "Today I'm going to be lecturing about the historical study of Alchemy. Is everyone ready?" She looked around and waited for some indication.
"Historically, as I'm sure most of you are already aware, Alchemy is the ancient study of a mix between chemicals and magic. Many Alchemists have tried to create gold from less valuable metals, and to create a potion that could cure all illnesses and make the drinker immortal. Now what thing you need to remember about alchemy is that you need a balance of chemicals and magic for it to work. To try and change plastic into gold would be preposterous. There is no balance of the elements and that... as you will find, is very important when dealing with Alchemy. It takes a great mathematician to be able to calculate all this information." Gabriella took a moment to let the students take down some key points. "Some say Alchemy was founded and studied first by the Arabs, but history has proven that Alchemy started everywhere; on all continents.
She walked around the room as she spoke, glancing down at some student's papers as she went to see what type of key points they were noting. "During the late 1500's two emperors hired the world's leading alchemists to work in the city of Prague in what is now known as the Czech Republic. This led to Prague gaining the nickname, 'The Metropolis of Alchemy'. Emperors, however, can be fickle as we've all read about in our history books. Most work almost solely on the whims and wishes of what they themselves deem worthy. So when a British alchemist, Edward Kelley, failed to create gold, he was thrown in the dungeons without a second though. Even the efforts of Britain's infamous Queen Elizabeth had failed to win his release. Sadly, Mr. Kelley died trying to escape." Gabriella said softly, her voice taking on a somber tone.
"He was only one fraud out there trying to pretend he was able to do more then he could. Of course, there were many frauds throughout our history. One thing that made Kelley stand out from the rest was he was a squib. So he had had knowledge of our ways and knew how to fool Muggles." Gabriella continued as she returned to the front of the room and leaned back against her desk. "There is another story told of an Arabian man who arrived in Prague in that era, and invited all the wealthiest men in the area to meet with him in a banquet hall. He promised them that he could multiply all of their gold, creating the gold from other forms of metal. He took in the gatherings of gold, then, once that was completed, he began to create a mixture of eggshells and horse manure, among other things. All this did was create a stink bomb. While the wealthy men were suffering from the smell, the Arabian man quickly took all the gold and escaped." Gabriella looked around the room to see if she had bored anyone into sleep yet. "So as you can see Alchemy has been used in a number of negative ways and has been given a very bad name in some countries, but there had always been one key element missing with every fraud out there... magic. They didn't have the magic to help create what they needed through the use of Alchemy."
Gabriella grinned mischievously as she clapped her hands to gather everyone's attention on her. Since she was getting to the important part of her tales. "Okay... so how many of you have heard of the Philosophers Stone?" She waited to see how many students would raise their hands and only hoped she wouldn't be disappointed. "Right, well, for those of you who do not know, the Philosophers Stone is a stone which most alchemists dedicated their entire lives searching for. By their theories of alchemy, all metals were a combination of mercury and sulfur. The more yellow the metal, the more sulfur in the mixture. So combining sulfur with mercury, in the right proportion and with the proper sequence of steps, would create gold. Many great minds of that time lost their lives in search of the ever elusive Philosophers Stone... Which was created by the infamous Nicholas Flamel."
As Gabriella trailed off her eyes fell upon the clock she had set up at the back wall and her eyes widened in shock. "Oh my goodness! The time! Please remember to leave your notes on my desk. Class dismissed!"
Questions
1. What is Alchemy?
2. What was Prague nicknamed?
3. How was Edward Kelley different from the other frauds?
4. What do most fraudulent Alchemists pretend they can do?
5. What are the two elements that all metals had a combination of?
1-2 paragraphs worth of notes
Subject: History of Alchemy 
Sun Oct 23, 2011 1:16 am
