Shannan’s Reviews > The Story of Alchemy and the Beginnings of Chemistry > Status Update

The way the author grapples with elements being things that can't be decomposed, and the fact that radioactive elements do, and therefore are a strange paradox is very interesting

The added bonus of this book as a turn of the 20th centuries' understanding of both the periodic table and radioactivity. They were just coming to terms with the electron and weren't sure what is was and still considered it massless.

This is one of the most interesting passages "The alchemists were very fond of using the names of animals as symbols of certain mineral substances, and of representing operations in the laboratory by what may be called animal allegories..."

This is very interesting as a internally consistent logic. It reminds me of Chinese medicine. There is also great gems about the history of chemistry, for example the definition of acids as misapprehensions such as being all products of oxygen. The discussion of caloric as a substance.