Part one of term paper
Science , ancient art practiced especially in the Middle Ages, devoted chiefly to discovering a substance that would transmute the more common metals into gold or silver and to finding a means of indefinitely prolonging human life. Although its purposes and techniques were dubious and often illusory, was in many ways the predecessor of mode ...

Part two of term paper
... theory advanced in the 5th century BC by Empedocles—that all things are composed of air, earth, fire, and water—was influential in . The Roman emperor Caligula is said to have instituted experiments for producing gold from orpiment, a sulfide of arsenic, and the emperor Diocletian is said to have ordered all Egyptian works concerning the chemistry of gold and silver to be burned in order to stop such experiments. Zosimus the Theban (about AD 250-300) discovered that sulfuric acid is a solvent o ...