ambix, Vol. 61 No.

4, November, 2014, 366–384

Hermetic Atomism: Christian Adolph

Balduin (1632–1682), Aurum Aurae, and
the 1674 Phosphor
Vera Keller
University of Oregon, Eugene, USA

The synthesis of phosphors, or light-bearing matter, figured largely among the

activities of early scientific societies and within the first scientific journals. They
were prestige objects during the formative institutionalisation of experimental
natural philosophy. Nevertheless, early phosphors have often appeared within
the historiography of chemistry as a throwback to an earlier era. They have
been represented as a fundamental epistemic and theoretical divide
between a mystical alchemy (exemplified by Christian Adolph Balduin) and
modern chemistry (prefigured by progressives such as Robert Boyle). The par-
allel phosphoric researches of Boyle and Balduin belie this divide. Recovering
the theoretical context of Balduin’s phosphor can both resituate it in relation to
phosphoric research of the 1670s and 1680s, as well as further illuminate the
intellectual sources and development of chymical atomism.

Introduction: comparing Boyle and Balduin

Robert Boyle (1627–1691), F.R.S. and Christian Adolph Balduin (1632–1682), F.R.S.
currently occupy two very different positions in the history of chemistry. Balduin’s
publications are rarely read today for the sake of understanding his matter theory,
although they are certainly interesting sources in and of themselves for understanding
contemporary fusions of atomism with occult qualities.1 Rather, Balduin and his
works are mentioned because his wider interests resulted in the synthesis of a
famous phosphor in 1674, the first widely known luminescent body to be synthesised
since the discovery of the Bologna stone in 1602 by Vincenzo Casciarolo.2 Balduin’s

1
An exception is the brief mention in Bernard Joly, “L’alkahest, dissolvant universel ou quand la théorie rend pensable
une pratique impossible,” Revue d’histoire des sciences 49 (1996): 305–44, on 341–42.
2
Fortunio Liceti, Litheosphorus sive de lapide Bononiensi lucem in se conceptam ab ambiente claro mox in tenebris
mire conservante (Udine: Schiratti, 1640). I refer to Balduin’s invention as a “phosphor” rather than phosphorus, in
order to distinguish it from today’s chemical element.

© Society for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry 2014 DOI 10.1179/1745823414Y.0000000003
 HERMETIC ATOMISM 367

phosphor is not the element known as phosphorus today, but what we would call
calcium nitrate. It was quickly followed by the news of the synthesis of other phos-
phors, including the element phosphorus, and by much discussion, display and exper-
imentation across Europe.
In narratives of chymical luminescence, Balduin’s work, which is rarely analysed,
has been seen as couched in impenetrable alchemical beliefs. Meanwhile, his con-
temporary Boyle’s interest in phosphors often appears as indicative of a new exper-
imental approach and a rational matter theory, even though the writings of both on
magnetic aerial effluvia could be compared and will be in this essay.3 Drawing upon
shared alchemical and natural philosophical authorities, Boyle and Balduin had
arrived at comparable views concerning aerial magnetic effluvia even before
Balduin developed his phosphor. Although Balduin’s phosphor has been described
as an accidental discovery made while pursuing an unrelated occult goal, he was
searching for solar particles hidden within the pores of the air and discussing the
materiality and magnetism of light prior to discovering his phosphor.4 The latter
was but one product of years of experimentation with the chemical components
of the air, and it elegantly supported the matter theories Balduin had already
developed.
Balduin’s 1673 work, Aurum Aurae (Gold of the Wind) presented a vigorous view
of the abundant and diverse atoms held invisibly within the pores of the air.5
Through magnetic attraction, such particles bound with particular bodies in measur-
able ways. These particles were both of terrestrial and of celestial origin. Balduin
hoped to invent a chemical magnet capable of attracting powerful, life-giving celes-
tial matter out of the air. In 1674, Balduin first developed an account of what he con-
sidered his “universal magnet,” which he published in a further two updated
editions, under a slightly altered title, in 1675.6 As the hidden “fire of nature,”
Balduin thought this substance could be used for additional discoveries, such as
Van Helmont’s alkahest. In preparing the alkahest from his magnet, Balduin then

3
For example, E. Newton Harvey, A History of Luminescence from the Earliest Times until 1900 (Philadelphia: Amer-
ican Philosophical Society, 1957), 124–25: “Of all the distinguished group on the roster of the Royal Society of
London, the only member to make an extended study of luminous phenomena was Robert Boyle … he became
one of the outstanding experimentalists in this field.” Balduin was “devoted to the fashionable pursuit of
alchemy” (321). See also J. V. Golinski, “A Noble Spectacle: Phosphorus and the Public Cultures of Science in the
Early Royal Society,” Isis 80 (1989): 11–39 and Susana Gómez, “The Bologna Stone and the Nature of Light,”
Nuncius 6 (1991): 3–32, discussed further in the conclusion. By contrast, F. Krafft (1969) is sympathetic to the
alchemical theories giving rise to seventeenth-century phosphors: F. Krafft, “Phosphorus: From Elemental Light to
Chemical Element,” Angew. Chem. International Edition 8/9 (1969): 660–71.
4
Harvey, Luminescence, 321: “The discovery resulted by chance, from Baldewein’s attempt to collect the universal
world spirit.”
5
John Flood, Poets Laureate in the Holy Roman Empire: A Bio-bibliographical Handbook (Berlin: de Gruyter, 2006),
vol. 1, 111–13. Christian Adolph Balduin, Aurum Aurae, Vi Magnetismi universalis, attractum (N.A: N.A., 1673);
reissued as Christian Adolph Balduin, Aurum Aurae, Vi Magnetismi universalis, attractum (Cologne: Völcker, 1674).
I describe Balduin’s position as atomist rather than corpuscularian, since “atom” is the term Balduin employs, and it
can be understood in an early modern sense as discussed in William Newman, “The Significance of ‘Chymical
Atomism,’” Early Science and Medicine 14 (2009): 248–64.
6
Christian Adolph Balduin, Aurum Superius & Inferius Aurae Superioris & Inferioris Hermeticum (Frankfurt: From-
mann, 1675) and Christian Adolph Balduin, Aurum Superius & Inferius Aurae Superioris & Inferioris Hermeticum
(Amsterdam: Waesberge, 1675).
368 VERA KELLER

found that it glowed when exposed to either light or heat. This was when he further
developed it into his phosphor, which he described in an appendix, “Phosphorus
Hermeticus, sive Magnes Luminaris” (The Hermetic Phosphor or Light Magnet),
to the 1675 edition of his work on the magnet. Balduin’s name for his phosphor
referred to his cognomen, Hermes, as a member of the Central European Academia
Naturae Curiosorum (Academy of the Curious about Nature). The 1675 edition,
including the “Phosphorus Hermeticus,” also appeared within the journal of the
Academy in 1676 and 1688.7 All these iterations made Balduin’s work widely avail-
able and allowed him to incorporate new evidence for his theories in subsequent edi-
tions. Such new evidence included but was not limited to his phosphor.
This essay seeks to restore Balduin’s phosphor to its theoretical and experimental
context. It will thus follow Balduin’s trail of publications closely. Paying particular
attention to subsequent editions of the same work by Balduin, it will illustrate
how he continually updated his editions as he discovered new evidence for his the-
ories. Balduin’s Aurum Aurae deserves to be read in its own right as an interesting
account of chymical atomist views synthesising a great deal of previous literature.
It further shows how such views related to debates concerning phosphors, which
were high prestige objects in early scientific societies. Resituating Balduin’s phosphor
can thus shed light on much wider debates and their sources.

Balduin’s 1673 Aurum Aurae

Balduin made his (creative) re-use of a prior corpuscularian tradition very clear. The
Aurum Aurae, although a slim work, is citation heavy.8 Only a few of Balduin’s
many sources can be reviewed here. Balduin began by citing his definition of air
from Van Helmont’s work on the plague. Air is transparent, free from weight, natu-
rally cold, but everywhere full of pores, which allows it to be extended and com-
pressed (as discussed by Van Helmont and Scaliger).9 He cited Cornelis Drebbel
to the effect that the four elements were but terms for states of varying thickness
7
Christian Adolph Balduin, “Aurum Superius & Inferius Aurae Superioris & Inferioris Hermeticum,” Appendix ad
annum quartum et quintum ephemeridum medico-physicarum naturae-curiosorum in Germania, hereafter Appendix
(Frankfurt: Fritzsch, 1676), 155–66; Balduin, “Phosphorus Hermeticus, sive Magnes Luminaris,” Appendix (Frank-
furt: Fritzsch, 1676), 167-72; Balduin, “Aurum Superius & Inferius Aurae Superioris & Inferioris Hermeticum,”
Appendix (Frankfurt and Leipzig: Gleditsch, 1688), 91–146; Balduin, “Phosphorus Hermeticus, sive Magnes Lumi-
naris,” Appendix (Frankfurt and Leipzig: Gleditsch, 1688), 147–51. It was also printed in Jean-Jacques Manget, Bib-
liotheca Chemica Curiosa (Geneva: Chouet, 1702), vol. 2, 856–75.
8
Occupying eighty pages in the 1673 edition, the Aurum Aurae expanded to 172 pages in the 1675 edition, not includ-
ing the appendix, “Phosphorus Hermeticus.”
9
This section is missing in Balduin’s 1673 edition. That he intended to include it, however, is indicated by the fact that
the next quote from Van Helmont, which is present (see n. 10), refers back to a previous citation. Balduin, Aurum
Aurae (1674), 7: “Elementum illud intelligimus, primigenium, transparens, tamque levitiatis quâm ponderis
expers, impermutabile ac perpetuum, frigore praeditum naturali, nisi situum & commistorum robore impediatur:
Poris autem ubivis refertum, & hactenùs extensionem aut compressionem sui tolerans: Joh. Bapt. Helmontius, in
Tum. Pest. infra coelum ac supra aquam terramque existens: uti loquitur Scaliger, se Subtil. Exerc. 27.” J. B. van
Helmont, Tumulus Pestis (Amsterdam: Elsevier, 1648), 51: “Aër itaque in se, est alterum ex elementis primigeniis,
transparens, tamque levitatis, quàm ponderis expers, impermutabile ac perpetuum, frigore praeditum naturali,
nisi situum & commistorum robore impediatur: Poris autem ubivis refertum, & hactenus extensionem, aut compres-
sionem sui tolerans.”
 HERMETIC ATOMISM 369

and thinness, and Emanuel Maignan’s view that the air is full of “spirituous parts of
bodies”; aether differs from air only in purity. Balduin again cited Van Helmont:
“The pores of the air are either empty or are full of foreign vapours.”10
According to Gaspar Schott, Balduin noted, there were two spirits that rose up
either through the heating power of the sun or stars, or through subterranean fire,
or through innate heat. Representing Aristotle’s views, Schott had differentiated
between vapour (thinner and lighter, extracted from liquid bodies) and exhalations
(extracted from dry bodies).11 Balduin, however, was not interested in the distinction
between vapour and exhalation, but in Schott’s description of the many heating
mechanisms responsible for elevating diverse effluvia into the air as well as the mul-
tiple natures of effluvia in the air. There were, he said, foreign effluvia in the air, com-
posed (concreti) differently per accidens according to the nature of the place where
they were exhaled. Therefore virgin earth, when exposed to the wind, would bear
plants since the air was impregnated with the seeds or spirits of the plants. Likewise,
earth was only a matrix, not a mother of bodies. The spirits of nitre and vitriol fly
through the air. That was why, after extracting the spirit from vitriol or nitre, if you
put its colcothar (vitriol calcined to redness) in the air for a few days, and then put it
back in a retort and on the fire, you could again extract a very effective spirit.
Emanuel Maignan offered this experiment and argued from it that this was why
the air was sometimes healthy or not, or sweet- or foul-smelling.12 Maignan
related that nitre, vitriol and alum could all be collected from the air. Within the
“atmosphere,” air was never pure.13 In London, so many inhabitants used coal
for heat that the air was full of smoke and salt. Rooms, halls and any instrument
whatsoever, no matter how bright and shining they had been before, were quickly
darkened.14 Schott noted that the air in the seaside town of Trapani in Sicily was
so impregnated by sea salt that it corroded iron. Therefore, Balduin wrote, the con-
stitution of air varied from causes depending on the site, the nature of the earth, the
proximity of seas and lakes, the presence of mines, and the time of year, as Sennert
had described at length.15 Balduin thus drew on a wide array of corpuscularian thin-
kers such as Van Helmont, Scaliger and Sennert who were also contributors to the
development of Boyle’s matter theory.16

10
Christian Adolph Balduin, Aurum Aurae (1673), 8: “Pori, vel Porositates, quibus refertum Aërem esse diximus, vel
planè hiant expertes corporis, in sui integritate manentes, vel replentur vaporibus alienisque exhalitibus [sic] …
Helmontius d. l.”; Van Helmont, Tumulus Pestis, 51: “Cujus porositates, vel replentur vaporibus, alienisque exha-
latibus; vel planè hiant, expertes corporis, in sui integritate manentes (quod alibi tractatu de vacuo necessario
demonstravi).”
11
Gaspar Schott, Physicae Curiosae Pars II (Nürnberg: Endter, 1667), 1182.
12
Balduin, Aurum Aurae (1673), 10.
13
Emanuel Maignan, Philosophiae Naturae (Lyons: Gregoire, 1673), 434.
14
Balduin, Aurum Aurae (1673), 11. Balduin may have derived this idea from Digby’s work on the sympathetic cure of
wounds, which Balduin cites elsewhere.
15
Balduin, Aurum Aurae (1673), 11; Daniel Sennert, Institutiones Medicinae (Wittenberg: Schurer, 1620), 752.
16
William R. Newman, “Corpuscular Alchemy and the Tradition of Aristotle’s Meteorology, with Special Reference to
Daniel Sennert,” International Studies in the Philosophy of Science 15/2 (2001): 145–53; William R. Newman and
Lawrence M. Principe, Alchemy Tried in the Fire: Starkey, Boyle, and the Fate of Helmontian Chymistry (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2002); William R. Newman and Lawrence M. Principe, “Alchemy and the Changing
Significance of Analysis,” in Wrong for the Right Reasons, ed. Jed Z. Buchwald (Dordrecht: Springer, 2005),
370 VERA KELLER

Summing up these views, Balduin concluded

Thus, the varying effluvia in the air always in great abundance are continually mixed
from different things, or of spirits of all sorts, that is, terrene, aqueous and igneous,
from earth, water, and fire, but also from minerals, and plants, animals, and even
from the bodies of men. Dispersed either through an extrinsic heat or through an intrin-
sic one, they are carried aloft due to their lightness. Then, attracted to homogeneous
bodies through a magnetic power, they are again turned into bodies.17

Magnetism offered a solution to the important problem of elective affinity which

allowed particular bodies to form again and again from this chaos of many
diverse particles.18
To prove this, Balduin offered yet another experiment, this time including a weight
measurement. He boiled ground iron pyrites (the Hessian minera martis solaris;
today, FeS2) in water until they were tasteless. Then he exposed twelve ounces to
cold air for fourteen days. The solution continually attracted a “wet, sweet salt of
Vitriol, so that when weighed it will be found to be two ounces heavier.”19 Balduin’s
experiment supported the view that that the pores of the air were full of a massive
amount of diverse particles. These might be invisible to the eye, but they affected
the salubrity and smell of the air. Furthermore, they could be discovered through
experiment. According to Balduin’s theory, a vitriolic salt was attracted out of the
air and concreted together with the exposed pyrites.
Moving on from exhalations of sub-lunar bodies carried in the air to celestial
matter carried in the air, Balduin began his Chapter III, “Even celestial matter flies
about in the wind,” by citing, of all people, Descartes. Descartes had described
the air as a congeries of terrestrial particles moving in a motion following the
orbits of the heavenly bodies (although Balduin conceded that Boyle interpreted
this passage differently in the latter’s Experiments upon Air). Balduin alluded to
Boyle’s entertainment of Descartes’s idea of a “restlesse agitation of the Celestial
Matter.” Descartes’s theory obviated the need to explain the corpuscles of the air
16
Continued
73–90; William R. Newman, Atoms and Alchemy: Chymistry and the Experimental Origins of the Scientific Revolu-
tion (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2006); and Christoph Lüthy, “An Aristotelian Watchdog as Avant-Garde
Physicist: Julius Caesar Scaliger,” The Monist 84 (2001): 542–61. On Schott as a corpuscularian, see William Clark,
“The German Nations,” in The Scientific Revolution in National Context, ed. Roy Porter and Mikulas Teich (Cam-
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992), 90–114, on 108.
17
Balduin, Aurum Aurae (1673), 11–12: “Quemadmodùm ergò variarum in aëre rerum permista varia continuò efflu-
via, sive omnisgeneris spiritus sunt, terrei puta, aquei atque ignei, è terra, aqua, igne, mineralibus quoque, plantis
item, animalibus, adeoque hominum corporibus, magnâ semper copiâ, vi caloris seu extrinseci, seu intrinseci resoluti
& ob levitatem ascititiam in altum evecti, ita à corporibus homogeneis vi magneticâ attracti iidem corporificantur.”
18
William R. Newman, “Elective Affinity before Geoffroy: Daniel Sennert’s Atomistic Explanation of Vinous and
Acetous Fermentation,” in Matter and Form in Early Modern Science and Philosophy, ed. Gideon Manning
(Leiden: Brill, 2012), 99–124.
19
Balduin, Aurum Aurae (1673), 12: “Utor Minera Marti-Solari (quam ex Hassiâ adferunt, tribusque diobolis libram
Lipsiae aestimant, non carius) flavâ intùs, aureae instar Marcasitae, caeterum planè insipida. Quam enim si in pul-
verem redigas diuque in aquâ coquas, ne colorem ista quidem mutabit, nec saporem alium, quàm qui aquae est,
habebis. Hujus Unicas duodecim, per integros quatuordecim dies, non ita pridem aëri frigido exposui. Quô facto,
peculiarem illa humidumque atque dulcem, talemque, qui Vitrioli est, salem attrasse continuò. quid? quod duabus
unciis aucta & ipsa pondere esset.”
 HERMETIC ATOMISM 371

as spring-like in shape, since they would be moved around anyway by the moving
“fluid Ether.”20
In any case, continued Balduin, he believed that celestial matter was scattered
throughout nature, and especially in the air, as the most noble element and the one
in which hid the spirit of life, as Sendivogius wrote. Citations from Johann Sperling,
Rudolph Goclenius and Marsilio Ficino illustrated that a vital astral spirit “accommo-
dated itself to metals, stones and plants,” and thrust itself into their substance, serving
as a spur to generation. Van Helmont called this aetherial substance the “magnale
magnum.” As Balduin noted, Athanasius Kircher, Heinrich Nollius, Friedrich Hoff-
mann, Pierre Jean Faber, Johann Tackius, Bernard Penotus, Gerhard Dorn, Nicholas
Papin, Cornelis Drebbel, Johann Poppius, Olaus Borrichius, Johann Rudolph
Glauber, Johann Ludwig Gottfried, Johann Rothmann, Clovis Hesteau de Nuysement
and Andreas Nitner all discussed this substance further.21
Based on such authors, he decided that the most likely candidate for a universal
magnet was nitre, in which the aetherial substance was abundantly disseminated,
for no salt is more universal. Due to its role in concreting sub-lunar mixts, it was
well worthy of further study, he said, citing Boyle.22 Balduin referred to Boyle’s dis-
cussion of “experiments concerning various parts of nitre,” in which the latter
argued that few other substances better supported the corpuscular hypothesis.
Among other authorities, Balduin also noted Thomas Henshaw’s microscopic
views of the prepared salt of maydew published in English and French journals,
showing how its microscopic shape resembled that of nitre.23
Balduin hoped to use his nitre-based magnet to attract a shining body from the
sun, for according to both Kenelm Digby and Van Helmont, “the substance of
light is material and corporeal.”24 This explained how the heat of the sun reached
the earth; it was far too distant to heat the earth directly. The earth was heated,
rather, by a fiery solar material which was scattered through the air. That material
communicated not only heat, but also a nourishing solar balsam. As Johann
Tackius had argued, we imbibe aetherial spirits daily from the air. 25 Balduin contin-
ued to discuss at length the many methods and best times for preparing a magnet

20
Balduin, Aurum Aurae (1673), 15–16: “Cartesius part. IV. Princ. Phil. N. 48. Lipstorpius p.3. specim. Philos.
Cart. C. 2. asserere videntur: aërem nihil aliud esse, quàm congeriem particularum terrestrium. tàm tenuium, & à
se mutuô disjunctarum, ut quibuslibet motibus globulorum coelestium obsequantur. Licet Dn. Robertus Boyle, in
Experimentis de aëre, Exper. 1. Cartesium, aliter interpretetur. Credendum tamen est, naturam, cui peculiaris
semper fuit cura, ut indefessum Coeli ac terrae commercium, velut admirabilis harmonia totius mundanae machinae
perduraret, à primô mundi ortu, etiam coelestem quandam substantiam vel materiam per universum orbem dissemi-
nasse.” Robert Boyle, New Experiments Physico-Mechanical Touching the Spring of the Air and its Effects (Oxford:
Hall, 1662), 14.
21
Balduin, Aurum Aurae (1673), 20.
22
Balduin, Aurum Aurae (1673), 22: “Est autem, ut aperriùs [sic] dicam, Magnesia Nitrum nostrum, sive sal Petrae, in
quô aetheria illa substantia copiosissimè disseminata. Nam nullus Sal est, qui sit, illô, magis catholicus.” Compare
Robert Boyle, Tentamina Physico-chymicum continens Experimentum circa varias partes nitri (Amsterdam: Elzevier,
1661), 1: “ … ita ut quavis asseveratione confirmare liceat, nullum Salem esse, qui sit isto magis Catholicus.”
23
Balduin, Aurum Aurae (1673), 26.
24
Balduin, Aurum Aurae (1673), 32.
25
Balduin, Aurum Aurae (1673), 33. Johann Tackius, Chrysogonia animalis et mineralis (Darmstadt: Abel, 1663), 29:
“ … cum aëre quotidie in solatium nostri haurimus, quique rubedinis tincturam abundantissimè habet.”
372 VERA KELLER

which could attract a vital essence from the sun. In the middle of the night the air
most abounded with these “balsamic aethereal atoms,” he argued.26 His discussion
of the vital virtues of this essence in the mineral, vegetable and animal realms
included experiments on the relationship between extracted bodily essences and
the body; to explore this further, Balduin made a thermometer from his own
blood to test whether its temperature and colour would fluctuate with his health.27

Balduin’s universal magnet and the light magnet

Long before his discovery of his phosphor, therefore, Balduin was discussing the cor-
poreity of light and how it might be attracted to and combine with other bodies con-
creted from diverse aerial effluvia. He tested these theories in diverse ways, including
with his blood thermometer. Continuing his chymical investigations of effluvia, he
discovered further phenomena which he incorporated in subsequent editions. In
1675, Balduin re-issued his Aurum Aurae (the dedication of which dated to
March 1673), now updated with his newest discoveries from September 1673 and
March 1674. He also inserted further accounts of aerial magnets. One new
account he copied from a letter communicated by Friedrich Clodius (Samuel Har-
tlib’s son-in-law) to Johann Moriaen concerning an aerial magnet built in London
in 1658 by the Küffler brothers (Cornelis Drebbel’s sons-in-law). They had calcined
nitre with the rays of the sun using a burning mirror, and then, climbing a tower or
mountain, they had exposed it to the air. They were able to attract a ruby liquid
before sunrise and a white liquid following sunrise.28
The Küffler experiment, as well as the theories of Sendivogius and others, indi-
cated that nitre was the important ingredient. In Balduin’s very own city of Hayn
were copious amounts of nitre efflorescing on rocks, known as “aphronitrum.”
He added a “certain type of earth” to a spirit of nitre, when lo and behold (Figure 1),
On the 15th of September, 1673, at 11 o’clock during a full moon … after my magnet had
been spread before the air three hours, it showed a figure corresponding exactly to a
circle, remarkable in its white round margin. The body was very hard, of a yellow
colour, corresponding to a star, decorated inside with rays.29

26
Balduin, Aurum Aurae (1673), 35: “aër atomis aetheriis balsamicisque quasi redundat.”
27
Balduin, Aurum Aurae (1673), 68.
28
Christian Adolph Balduin, Aurum Superius & Inferius Aurae Superioris & Inferioris Hermeticum (Frankfurt: From-
mann, 1675), 59–60. A letter from Johann Moriaen to Samuel Hartlib of 14 June 1658 describing this survives in the
Hartlib Papers: Samuel Hartlib, The Hartlib Papers CD (Sheffield: HROnline, Humanities Research Institute, Uni-
versity of Sheffield, 2nd ed., 2002), 31/18/29A-30B. Boyle would also draw explicitly upon the interests of Hartlib
and his contemporaries in aerial effluvia by publishing a circa 1657 letter from Benjamin Worsley to Samuel Hartlib
as “Of celestial Influences or Effluviums in the Air,” in Robert Boyle, The General History of the Air (London: John
Churchill, 1692), 67–82. See Hartlib, Hartlib Papers, 26/56/1A-4B. As discussed by Antonio Clericuzio, “New Light
on Benjamin Worsley’s Natural Philosophy,” in Samuel Hartlib and Universal Reformation: Studies in Intellectual
Communication, ed. Mark Greengrass, Michael Leslie, and Timothy Raylor (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1994), 236–46.
29
Balduin, Aurum Superius (1675), 71–72: “Contigit hoc A. AE CIC DC LXXIII d. 15. Sept. quem excipiebat, hora 11
noctis, plenilunium. Effusus, quô dixi, post meridiem, die, Magnes meus aëri commitebatur, cùm effluxis omninò
tribus horis, exactissimè respondens Circulo, margine & ipso orbiculari albo notabilis, se figura exeruit. Durissimum
corpus, colore luteo, stellam referens, radiis intùs distinguebatur.”
 HERMETIC ATOMISM 373

figure 1 Balduin’s “Universal Magnet,” dated 15 September 1673. Christian Adolph

Balduin, “Aurum Superius & Inferius Aurae Superioris & Inferioris Hermeticum,” Appendix
ad annum quartum et quintum ephemeridum medico-physicarum naturae-curiosorum in
Germania (Frankfurt & Leipzig, 1688). With permission of the Linda Hall Library of
Science, Engineering & Technology.

Balduin was looking for a substance involving nitre, stone and the ambient air
which would bear some relationship to the sun. He believed he had found it. In
the 1675 edition of his work (unlike in the 1673 edition), he represented it with
the date of its discovery (Figure 1). He described it as the “fire of nature” which
could be used to make further chymical discoveries, such as the alkahest of Paracel-
sus and Van Helmont.30 This has been misunderstood as Balduin’s light magnet, but

30
Balduin, Aurum superius (1675), 74.
374 VERA KELLER

it was not; this was his universal magnet.31 He likewise represented and dated to
March 1674 another phenomenon, his “vegetable magnet,” a plant-like form he
“grew” from his universal magnet which illustrated, he argued, how salts concreted
out of air and water to form plants (Figure 1).32
The light magnet was a separate discovery that same year. In a pamphlet entitled
“Phosphorus Hermeticus,” Balduin described how he had been ruminating upon
various forms of artificial light, wondering whether he might be able to prepare it
from his universal magnet, since he believed that the latter held the philosophic
fire.33 His ruminations included Boyle’s experiments upon Clayton’s luminescent
diamond, the various discussions of the Bologna stone, and Van Helmont’s statement
that “lumen is a real entity outside of lux.”34 Then, while attempting to prepare the
alkahest from the universal magnet, his glass retort, although cold, began to glow
like a heated iron. His alkahest had indeed penetrated to a great wonder of nature,
he believed.35 He subjected the substance to various tests, discovering that it shone
when exposed either to light or to heat, whether in a liquid or solid form, and
whether open to the air, in glass, or submerged in various liquids. He further wondered
whether from the same principle, that is, from the alkahest or concentrated fire, he
might be able to build the long-lost fire of the ancients described by so many.
The discovery of the “light magnet” might indeed be understood as an accidental
discovery made in pursuit of the alkahest (despite Balduin’s claim that he had
already been theorising about sources of light). However, Balduin was already
exploring the ability of a celestial magnet to attract the “fire of nature” via aerial
atoms beforehand. It was while pursuing a course of trials attempting to demon-
strate these phenomena that his discovery occurred. Like other evidence he uncov-
ered, he continued to deploy the phosphor as further support for his prior views
concerning atomism.
Balduin’s “light magnet” was made of nitric acid and chalk. Unlike elementary
fire, it could burn cold, within water, and without air. It did display a curious
relationship to air, since air turned it to a liquid. One of the main features dis-
tinguishing Balduin’s phosphor from the “constant phosphorus” later prepared by
Krafft, Kunckel and others was considered by its inventor to be its most important
asset. The light magnet could not shine on its own, but only when exposed to sun,

31
cf. Lynn Thorndike, A History of Magic and Experimental Science: The Seventeenth Century (New York: Columbia
University Press, 1958), vol. 8, 381.
32
Balduin, Aurum superius (1675), 166.
33
Christian Adolph Balduin, Phosphorus Hermeticus, sive Magnes Luminaris (Frankfurt: Frommann, 1675), [)(5].
“Quae dum mecum aliquotiens ponderarem, coepi eâdem operâ & de Lapide Luminari cogitare, & annon idem
ex Materiâ nostrâ Universalissimâ possit parari. Quò quidem me passus Rationes istas adducere sum: quòd eidem
Philosophicum Ignem scirem inesse.”
34
Balduin, Phosphorus Hermeticus, [)(5]: “Lumen esse reverà Ens extra lucem.” J. B. Van Helmont, “Magnum
Oportet,” in Ortus Medicinae. Id est, initia physicae inavdita … , ed. Franciscus Mercurius van Helmont (Amster-
dam: Elzevier, 1648), 156.
35
Balduin, Phosphorus Hermeticus, [)(5v]. “Itaque ante paucos admodùm dies, cùm in conficiendo Alkahest studium
atque operam posuissem, destillatione peractâ, Retortam vitream, frigefactam, intùs deprehendi lucere, candentis
ferri in modum, effectamque Lapidem Luminarem. Credibile erat, praestitisse, quod videram, meum Alkahest; qui
penetrasset. Mirabilitatem verò Naturae!”
 HERMETIC ATOMISM 375

candlelight, or warmth. This, to Balduin’s way of thinking, was evidence of its “mag-
netic” qualities. As he wrote to the Secretary of the Royal Society, Henry Oldenburg,
in a letter published in the 1676 Philosophical Transactions, his light magnet con-
tained “a real spark of the fire and light of nature.” By February 1677, Balduin
had been elected to the Royal Society in honour of his discovery.36
Although Balduin was a Fellow of the Society, an important source for later
unsympathetic accounts of Balduin’s texts can be found in the Society’s journal.
The 1809 abridged edition of the Philosophical Transactions offered an English
translation of Balduin’s letter. An editor (either Charles Hutton, George Shaw or
Richard Pearson) noted that Balduin had “dissolved a quantity of chalk in nitrous
acid” for “some purpose or other,” and thus “the discovery of this chemical
phenomenon” was “wholly accidental.” The translator added that Balduin’s letter
represented “a tolerable specimen of the absurd mode of philosophising among
the chemical or rather alchemical writers at this period of time.”37 These views
were the source for E. Newton Harvey’s dismissive account of Balduin’s writings
in Harvey’s authoritative History of Luminescence, cited above.38

Boyle’s 1674 Suspicions

While Boyle and Balduin have often been distinguished in studies of phosphors,
Boyle’s 1674 Suspicions about some Hidden Qualities in the Air might be compared
to Balduin’s 1673 Aurum Aurae. Lawrence Principe has suggested that more atten-
tion be directed to this tract, especially given its relevance to the ideas Newton was
developing concerning “magnetic effluvia” in 1675.39 John Henry has deployed it in
order to offer a re-interpretation of Boyle’s position concerning mechanism. Suspi-
cions, he argues, addresses far more directly some hints Boyle had offered in his
1671 Cosmical Qualities about exotic corpuscles with occult qualities, whose exist-
ence might be proven through the manifest phenomena they caused.40 If
36
Royal Society Archives, EL/O2/173. A. Rupert Hall and Marie Boas Hall, eds., The Correspondence of Henry Old-
enburg (London: Taylor & Francis, 1986), vol. 14, 65 and 175. Christian Adolph Balduin, “Extract of a Letter
Written to the Publisher, Concerning a Factitious Stony Matter of Paste, Shining in the Dark like a Glowing Coal,
after it Hath Been a Little While Exposed to the Day-or Candle-Light,” Philosophical Transactions 11 (1676),
788. “Latet in Phosphoro isto ignis & luminis Naturae realis scintillula, imò secretissima anima, proindeque intrin-
secus atque invisibilis Sophorum ignis, visibilem Solis ignem magneticâ ratione attrahens, splendoremque ipsius vicis-
sim in Tenebris emittens ejaculansque.”
37
Christian Adolph Balduin, “A Letter from Christianus Adolphus Balduinus to Mr. Oldenburg, Secretary of the Royal
Society,” The Philosophical Transactions, Abridged, eds. Charles Hutton, George Shaw and Richard Pearson
(London: Baldwin, 1809), vol. II, 368.
38
Note 6, supra; Harvey, Luminescence, 321: “Baldewein’s translators have all complained of his enigmatic language,
known only to those initiated in the mysteries of alchemy.” Harvey, note 26, cites the translation of Balduin’s
excerpted letter in the 1809 Philosophical Transactions, which is in fact the only translation Balduin’s works have
received. Harvey’s description of Balduin as “devoted to the fashionable pursuit of alchemy” is also taken verbatim
from the editorial note in the 1809 Philosophical Transactions, as is the incorrect date of 1673 for Balduin’s discovery
of the phosphor.
39
Lawrence M. Principe, “Robert Boyle’s Alchemical Pursuits,” in Robert Boyle Reconsidered, ed. Michael Hunter
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 91–105; Betty Jo Teeter Dobbs, The Foundations of Newton’s
Alchemy or ‘The Hunting of the Greene Lyon’ (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1975), 204.
40
John Henry, “Boyle and Cosmical Qualities,” in Robert Boyle Reconsidered, ed. Michael Hunter (Cambridge: Cam-
bridge University Press, 1994), 91–105; 119–38.
376 VERA KELLER

understanding Suspicions can shed light on Boyle and Newton’s views concerning
the actions of corpuscles not defined only by size, shape, and motion, then it
should also be helpful to understand Boyle’s essay in the context of the wider
debate concerning celestial magnets, including Balduin’s Aurum Aurae.
It is even possible Boyle rushed Suspicions into print due to Balduin’s 1673 Aurum
Aurae. Hunter and Davis have suggested that “the similarity between the ideas put
forward here by Boyle and those divulged by John Mayow in his Tractatus quinque
of the same year [1674] … may have acted as stimulus to put long-composed writ-
ings into print, as in other comparable cases”;41 if Mayow’s 1674 treatise could offer
such a stimulus, then Balduin’s 1673 work may have done so as well. Boyle’s “notor-
ious sensitivity” concerning credit encouraged his “habit of rushing into print.”42
However, Boyle does not, by and large, refer to his sources. He only notes that
“some years ago” he had begun to set down observations and experiments concern-
ing the air arranged according to various titles.43 Because he believed that this par-
ticular title might afford “hints” to others, he now excerpted it from the rest and
published it (the rest of Boyle’s collections on the history of air would not appear
until 1692, in a still very unfinished state).44 It would thus be difficult to argue
that Boyle drew directly upon Balduin. He merely mentions “some of the mysterious
writers about the Philosophers-stone” and the “mystical Theories of the Chy-
mists.”45 It was appropriate to “discourse like a Naturalist” concerning the
phenomena they broached, such as “Magnets of Celestial and other Emanations,”
since such phenomena were not considered “either by the Scholastic, or even the
Mechanical, Philosophers.”46
Like Balduin, Boyle argued that the “Atmosphere” is a “great receptacle or ren-
devouz of Celestial and Terrestrial Effluviums,” some of which might possess as
yet undiscovered and powerful virtues.47 He also suggested that the air itself
might transform these particles, acting as a Menstruum, which may be illustrated
by phenomena such as the natural production of verdigris from copper (a prep-
aration normally artificially produced through vinegar).48 He further discussed a
phenomenon “not so much as mention’d by Vulgar Philosophers, and very rarely,
if at all, to be met with in the Laboratories of Chymists,” that is, the efflorescence

41
Robert Boyle, The Works of Robert Boyle, ed. Michael Hunter and Edward B. Davis (London: Pickering & Chatto,
2000), vol. 8, xv.
42
For “notorious sensitivity,” see Harriet Knight and Michael Hunter, “Robert Boyle’s Memoirs for the Natural
History of Human Blood (1684): Print, Manuscript and the Impact of Baconianism in Seventeenth-Century
Medical Science,” Medical History 51 (2007): 145–64, on 150. For “habit of rushing into print,” see Peter Walmsley,
Locke’s Essay and the Rhetoric of Science (Cranbury, NJ: Associated University Press, 2003), 88. See also Michael
Hunter, Robert Boyle (1627–91): Scrupulosity and Science (Woodbridge: Boydell Press, 2000), 137–38, 219–21.
43
Robert Boyle, Tracts containing Suspicions about some Hidden Qualities of the Air; with an Appendix touching
Celestial Magnets, and some other Particulars (London: Pitt, 1674), [A2].
44
Boyle, General History of the Air.
45
Boyle, Tracts, 48 and 50.
46
Boyle, Tracts, 51.
47
Boyle, Tracts, 5.
48
Boyle, Tracts, 7–8.
 HERMETIC ATOMISM 377

of vitriol upon pyrites exposed to the air, a phenomenon also discussed by Balduin. It
may be suspected, he wrote,

that the formerly mention’d Salts found in Marchasites, in Nitrous and Aluminous
Earths, &c. are made by the saline particles of the like nature, that among multitudes
of other kinds swim in the Air, and are attracted by the congenerous particles that yet
remain in the Terrestrial bodies, that are, as it were, the wombs of such Minerals.

Thus, Boyle suggested, as had Balduin, that magnetism could offer a means for elec-
tive affinity. Another possibility could be that the aerial salts, assisted by humidity,
might release latent saline particles already hidden with these bodies.49
The death of hot animals deprived of air strongly suggested that some “vital sub-
stance” was “diffus’d through the Air,” whether it be “a volatile Nitre, or (rather)
some yet anonymous substance, Sydereal or Subterraneal.”50 Certainly, aerial efflu-
via might be responsible for widespread plagues, especially those targeting particular
species, such as cats.51 He wondered whether the dissolution of sunspots might be
found to have an effect upon the weight of the air, as the solar material was
thrown off into it. As evidence for interaction between celestial and terrestrial
matter, Boyle noted that “the Sun will impart a lucidness to the Bolonian stone.”52
Thus, Boyle shifted to the possibility of building celestial magnets which might
serve as “Receptables, if not also Attractives, of the Sydereal, and other exotic Efflu-
viums that rove up and down in our Air.”53 Without “receding from the Corpuscu-
larian Principles,” bodies could be spoken of as having “a greater resemblance to
Magnets, than what I have been mentioning,” via “a kind of precipitating
faculty” which could “fetch in such steams as would indeed pass near it, but
would not otherwise come to touch it.”54
Boyle continued to develop this idea in his next essay, “Of Celestial & Aerial
Magnets,” which was devoted primarily to experiments upon vitriol. He cited
Zwelfer on the colcothar of vitriol, a phenomenon that Balduin also cited and attrib-
uted to Maignan (although Balduin cited Zwelfer for other reasons).55 Zwelfer
hypothesised that the renewed bitterness of colcothar exposed to the air might
arise from a salt, or exhalations, attracted out of the air into the colcothar.56
Boyle tried this, but it did not work for him, perhaps due to “the peculiarity in

49
Boyle, Tracts, 20–21.
50
Boyle, Tracts, 27.
51
Boyle, Tracts, 40.
52
Boyle, Tracts, 47.
53
Boyle, Tracts, 48.
54
Boyle, Tracts, 49–50. Henry also cites this passage, “Boyle and Cosmical Qualities,” 126.
55
Boyle, Tracts, 57.
56
Johan Zwelfer, Animadversiones in Pharmacopoeiam Augustanam (N.A.: By the author, 1652), 408: “ … si optimè
calcinatum & omninò â spiritibus liberatum fuerit, penitùs non sit corrosivum, neque (quod saepè expertus sum)
statim à destillatione sal ex eodem affusâ aquâ elici queat, sed tùm priùs, ubi aliquandiu aëri expositum fuerit,
tunc enim sal preabet quandoque candidum, quandoque purpureum, aspectu pulcherrimum, quod aliquandiu in
copia acquisivi, & penes me asservo, quandoque etiam nitrosum … licet deinceps, ubi aliquandiu astris & aëri expo-
situm fuerit, ab attracto sale ex aëre vel exhalationibus in eo contentis, aperitivam virtutem nanciscatur.”
378 VERA KELLER

the Air in that part of London.”57 He also suggested further experiments, including
weighing pyrites exposed to air, Balduin’s very experiment. He did not give many
details, “for certain reasons,” but advertised that,
several bodies, which experience has assur’d us do imbibe or retain something from the
Air, as some calcin’d Minerals, some Marchasites, some Salts, as well factitious as
natural, &c. may be fit to be often exposed to it, and then weighed again, and farther
diligently examined, whether that which makes the increment of weight, be a meer
imbibed moisture or also somewhat else.58

Reception of Aurum Aurae and “Phosphorus Hermeticus”

Despite Balduin’s election to the Royal Society, little discussion of his theories can be
found in the work of its English members. While Boyle, for instance, deployed Bal-
duin’s phosphor at length in observation and experiment in his 1680 Aerial Nocti-
luca, he did not address Balduin’s theories.59 The extract of Balduin’s letter to
Oldenburg published in the Transactions passed without comment on its content.
We find only the wish expressed that Balduin would share his recipe for the
magnet with the Society.60 The neglect of open discussion of Balduin’s theories
can be seen further in the review of the 1676 issue of the German Academy’s
journal published within the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society that
year. The review passed over the content of Aurum Aurae in silence. It briefly
recorded a list of phenomena from the appendix, the “Phosphorus Hermeticus,”
instead.61
By contrast, Balduin’s theoretical views of his phosphor were much discussed on
the continent. Balduin’s 1675 edition of Aurum Aurae and his 1675 “Phosphorus
Hermeticus” were both printed in the journal of the German Academy in 1676,
together with several other observations by Balduin and assorted responses to his
work. Friedrich Hoffmann published a review of Aurum Aurae, and Christoph
57
Boyle, Tracts, 60.
58
Boyle, Tracts, 54–55.
59
Robert Boyle, The Aerial Noctiluca: or Some New Phoenomena and a Proces of a Factitious Self-shining Substance
(London: Snowden, 1680). Robert Boyle, “A Paper of the Honourable Robert Boyl’s, Deposited with the Secretaries
of the Royal Society, Octob. 14. 1680. and Opened Since His Death; Being an Account of His Making the Phos-
phorus, etc.,” Philosophical Transactions 17 (1693): 583–84.
60
Balduin, “Extract of a Letter,” Philosophical Transactions 11 (1676), 789.
61
Anon., “An Account of some Books: I. Ephemeridum Medico-physicarum Germanicarum ANNUS IV & V, Anni
1673 & 1674, &c. Cum Appendice: Francofurti & Lipsiae, 1676,” Philosophical Transactions 11 (1676), 744:
“Some observations of Dr. Balduin; concerning 1. the Regermination of Silver, by a new artifice; 2. the Urns of
the pagan Germans. 3. a Factitious stone, shining in the dark, after it hath been a while expos’d to the Sun, as the
natural Bolonian stone is said to do, though that artificial one is affirmed to do it in a more excellent manner, for-
asmuch as, when after the imbibition of the Solar light it is cast into a glass-full of Spirit of Niter, it doth notwith-
standing shine in the dark; and that more is, when ‘tis taken out of the said liquor, and dried again in the dark to
make it lose its light, and then put again into a glassfull of cold water, and exposed to the day-light, it will for all
this resume a splendent brightness even in the cold water itself: Again, being again taken out of the cold water
and dried, and deprived of its light in the dark, and then put into a hot oven, it will there recover its light, though
the room be dark. There is further mention’d and described in this work Dr. Mentzelius his Tract, comparing this
Shining stone of D. Balduin with that of Bolonia.”
 HERMETIC ATOMISM 379

Mentzel contributed a long disquisition on the many ways in which the “Phosphorus
Hermeticus” surpassed the Bologna stone (this was also published separately at
Mentzel’s expense).62 Mentzel connected Balduin’s phosphor back to Balduin’s
prior published theories on the universal magnet, as did other German commenta-
tors.63 He also pointed out that the internal form of the Bologna stone, published
in the journal, was similar to the stellar form of the universal magnet from which
Balduin produced his “Phosphorus Hermeticus” (Figure 2).64
Elsewhere, others cited Aurum Aurae for both its theoretical content and the
experimental phenomena it described, including but not limited to the light
magnet.65 In England, however, Edmund Dickinson referred to the “Aurum
Aurae” of the Hermetic philosophers, but did not cite Balduin by name.66 Giovanni
Francesco Vigani, future professor at Cambridge, cited the Aurum Aurae of “the
learned Rudolphus [sic] Balduinus” in 1682, although Vigani was a new arrival
in England at the time.67
Balduin himself continually connected his phosphor to his theories regarding the
existence of celestial effluvia in the air, the material nature of light, and the magnetic
action of diverse kinds of atoms, all of which he argued, could be proven through
observation and chymical trials. In a 1677 work concerning a chrysocolla suppo-
sedly produced by a lightning bolt, Balduin connected Aurum Aurae, the phenom-
enon of the light magnet, and the further evidence supplied by this object (which
he subjected to eighteen chymical trials) in support of the existence of aerial “met-
allic atoms” (metallicae atomi).68
The interest in the theoretical content of Aurum Aurae is further illustrated by the
fact that Balduin’s 1674 edition of Aurum Aurae (not yet updated with his discov-
eries of 1673) was published by none other than Johann Sigismund Elsholz
(1623–1688). Elsholz did so, according to an epilogue, due to the “novelty of its
argument.”69 Elsholz, the court physician in Berlin, is a familiar figure in the
history of phosphorus, for he witnessed the presentation by Johann Daniel Krafft,

62
Friedrich Hoffmann, “Epistola viri cujusdam doctissimi continens Judicium e Auro Aurae,” in Appendix (Frankfurt:
Fritzsch, 1676), 173–79; Christian Mentzel, “Lapis Bononiensis in obscuro lucens, collatus cum Phosphoro Herme-
tico,” Appendix (Frankfurt: Fritzsch, 1676), 180–214; and Mentzel, Lapis Bononiensis In obscuro lucens : collatus
Cum Phosphoro Hermetico Clariss. Christiani Adolphi Balduini, cognomine Hermetis, &c. nuper edito (N.A.: By the
author, 1675).
63
See also Georg Caspar Kirchmaier, De phosphoris et natura lucis (Wittenberg: Ellinger, 1680), 8–9.
64
Mentzel, “Lapis Bononiensis” (1676), 214.
65
Those citing Aurum Aurae included Augustus Quirinus Rivinus, Agrestis vitae sanitas (Leipzig: Georg, 1677), [B2];
Caspar Cramer, Collegium Chymicum (Frankfurt: Erth, 1688), 47, 99, 117. At p. 9, Cramer deploys the Bologna
stone and Balduin’s light magnet to support a more general theory of universal motion.
66
Edmund Dickinson, Physica Vetus et Vera (London: Ribotteau, 1702), 142.
67
Giovanni Francesco Vigani, Medulla Chymiae (Danzig: Waesberge, 1682), 11. Vigani republished the work in
London in 1685. Simon Schaffer and Larry Stewart, “Vigani and After: Chemical Enterprise in Cambridge 1680–
1780,” in The 1703 Chair of Chemistry at Cambridge: Transformation and Change, ed. Mary Archer and Christo-
pher Haley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 31–56, on 32.
68
Venus Aurea (in forma Chrysocollae fossilis) cum fulmine coelitus delapsa prope Haynam d. 28. Maii, 1677 (Hayn:
Kramer, 1677), 44. Those citing the Venus Aurea included Johann Moritz Hoffmann, Acta laboratorii chemici Alt-
dorfini (Nürnberg: Tauber, 1719), 131–32 and 185–87 and Michael Ettmuller, Opera medica theorico-practica
(Frankfurt: Zunner, 1708), vol. 1, 754, 796 and 864.
69
Balduin (1674), epilogue: “novitate argumenti.”
380 VERA KELLER

figure 2 The Bologna stone, in Christian Mentzel, “Lapis Bononiensis in obscuro lucens,
collatus cum Phosphoro Hermetico,” Appendix ad annum quartum et quintum ephemeridum
medico-physicarum naturae-curiosorum in Germania (Frankfurt & Leipzig, 1688). The lower
right-hand corner shows the starry interior, which Mentzel compared to Balduin’s universal
magnet. With permission of the Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering & Technology.

councilor of commerce to the Saxon elector, of four different phosphors at the Berlin
court. Elsholz published his observations on the four in 1676.70 He re-issued Bal-
duin’s Aurum Aurae, however, before Balduin discovered his phosphor, and due
to Balduin’s ideas alone.
To both Balduin and his German commentators, the production of his phosphor
was not an accident, but the product of his research into non-obvious sources of the
fire of nature, or the “inferior gold” hidden in the air. It further confirmed his theor-
etical commitments, including atomism. In his “Phosphorus Hermeticus,” Balduin
argued that the fact that his phosphor could be illuminated not only by the sun
and the moon, but also by the weak light of a candle, supported the atomic
theory. Although candles need to be kindled directly by a source, his light magnet

70
Johann Sigismund Elsholz, De phosphoris quatuor, observatio (Berlin: Schultz, 1676).
 HERMETIC ATOMISM 381

could be kindled by the light of a candle even from afar, “for the fire hidden within
my Phosphor attracted the light, or rather, fiery atoms, and thus made it shine …
through this experiment, the doctrine of atoms can be established.”71
In his history of phosphors, Leibniz presented Balduin’s phosphor as an important
event in debates concerning the corpuscular nature of light. He described how
Balduin found that his phosphor would,
imbibe the light, when expos’d thereto, and retain it for some time, and carry it along
with it into a dark place, as a sponge does the water it has imbib’d. This experiment
did not a little startle the Cartesians (very few of whom had seen the Bolognian stone)
that light should of a sudden become a gross and portable thing, whose rays they
suppos’d to consist in pression only, and to be propagated in an instant of time.
Balduin concealedly describ’d his experiment in a treatise, entitled Aurum Aurae.72

Conclusion
Phosphors were extraordinarily prominent subjects in early scientific journals, with
articles on the topic published in the Philosophical Transactions, the Miscellanea
Curiosa, and the Acta Eruditorum. Leibniz published his history of the discovery
of phosphorus in the very first issue of the journal of his Berlin Academy. The
role of phosphors as a subject of learned debate illustrates the centrality of
alchemy to the institutionalisation of experimental natural philosophy.73 The recep-
tion of phosphoric research was very uneven, however. The English reception of
Balduin, which celebrated and rewarded his phosphorus while neglecting his
wider views concerning aerial atoms, has shaped current historiographic views.
When reading, for example, Boyle’s 1674 Suspicions or 1680 Aerial Noctiluca, it
may seem as though Balduin produced the object, and Boyle the theory. This is
indeed the view of one account of the history of seventeenth-century phosphor-
escence, according to which both the Bologna stone and Balduin’s phosphor
served as objects which more recognised scientific figures, such as Boyle, Newton
and Lémery, might use to experiment and theorise upon; “the Bolognese stone
and Baldwin’s phosphorus became objects of the experimental verification of the
corporeity of light, of the attraction between light and the rest of the substances
and its blending with them.”74 Golinski has likewise distinguished between Bal-
duin’s “occult” understanding of phosphorus and the mechanistic views of the
English Fellows of the Royal Society, arguing that if “English experimenters
thought of phosphorus in the same [magnetic] way, they did not say so.” In fact,
71
Balduin, Phosphorus Hermeticus, [)(6v]: “Et reconditus tamen in isthoc Phosphoro meo ignis attrahit Lumen, vel
atomos igneas, efficiturque, ipse ut luceat. … Quô experimentô Doctrinam de Atomis stabiliri liceat.”
72
G. G. Leibniz, “Historia inventionis Phosphori,” Miscellanea Berolinensia 1 (1710): 91–92. Translation from
Leibniz, “The History of the Invention of the Phosphorus,” Acta germanica (London: Smith, 1742), 73.
73
Golinski, “A Noble Spectacle,” 11.
74
Susana Gómez, “The Bologna Stone and the Nature of Light,” Nuncius 6 (1991): 3–32, on 22.
382 VERA KELLER

figure 3 A later reconstruction of Balduin’s phosphoric inventions for the Habsburg Kunst-
kammer. Johann Cohausen, Lumen Novum Phosphoris Accensum, Sive Exercitatio Physico-
Chymica, De Causa lucis in Phosphoris tam naturalibus quàm artificialibus (Amsterdam:
Oosterwyk, 1717), 203. With permission of the Linda Hall Library of Science, Engineering &
Technology.

Boyle had already discussed the “Bolonian stone” in his 1674 essay on celestial
magnets.75
Historiographically, Balduin’s phosphor has been divided from his theories.
Balduin and some of his Central European contemporaries, however, drew connec-
tions between the way the light magnet functioned and his more general theories
concerning universal magnetism and chymical atomism. The light magnet was but
one of several phenomena he described in the course of his experimentation upon
aerial particles.
This is not to say that Balduin ignored the phosphor’s particular potential for
spectacle. He invented a number of wonderful phosphoric automata advertised in
his Hermes Curiosus, published in two editions in 1680 and again in the journal

75
Golinski, “A Noble Spectacle,” 21. Boyle, Tracts, 47.
 HERMETIC ATOMISM 383

of the Academia Naturae Curiosorum in 1683. Balduin’s automata included a Haps-

burg eagle which rose and glowed with the sun, a luminescent imperial orb upon
which the name “LEOPOLD” shone, and a barometric, time-telling perpetual
motion device complete with an artificial sun (Figure 3). Even in his description of
these curiosity objects, however, Balduin carefully placed them in the context of
current theoretical debates, as befitted one who was a member both of the Academia
Naturae Curiosorum and the Royal Society. For example, in describing his fourth
invention, a shining glass sphere, Balduin referred to a 1666 article in the Philoso-
phical Transactions “of our Royal Society,” on the loss of the preparation of the
Bologna stone. Balduin had invented something of much greater power than the
Bologna stone, however, which he used in his solar eagle, in his shining imperial
orb, and in a fiery Vertumnus, but he was not content with these. He wondered
whether it might be possible to attract the fire or light from the human heart
through the light magnet. The flame of the heart was much discussed by contempor-
ary physicians, such as Jacob Holst, Walter Needham, and the illustrious Robert
Boyle, he said, connecting the object to contemporary medical debates. When
inserted into the mouth, his glass sphere would start to glow when heated by
bodily heat. Suspended from the neck of a woman, it would glow between her
breasts.76
The practical applications of phosphors were immediately recognised. Boyle
suggested they could be used as a lighting source in the powder rooms of ships, or
to attract deepwater fish, to show the hour on a clock at night, and so on.77 The
fact that the white phosphor was prepared out of inexpensive (indeed, waste)
materials recommended it to commercially minded chymists such as Krafft and
Kunckel. As the cameralist and chymist Wilhelm von Schroeder wrote, “he who
can make a menstruum out of the spirit of urine can produce strange effects, such
as the perpetual light [that is, the phosphor] and the like, which other and more
expensive tinctures cannot effect.”78 Neither the practical nor the spectacular appli-
cations of phosphors detracted, however, from their deployment by chymists such as
Balduin in debates concerning matter theory.
The phosphor illuminates the interface of commerce, theory and curiosity promi-
nent in the research programs of seventeenth-century scientific societies. As the case
of Balduin has shown, it is not at all the case that “the interest of these chemists or
alchemists was of a very different nature than that of the mechanicist and corpuscu-
larist philosophers that inquired about the nature of light or heat and attempted to
explain it in mechanical terms of matter and motion,” such as Boyle.79 Seventeenth-

76
Christian Adolph Balduin, Hermes Curiosus sive, Inventa et experimenta physico-chymica nova (Leipzig: From-
mann, 1680), 17–19.
77
Boyle, Aerial Noctiluca, 19–20.
78
Wilhelm von Schroeder, Wilhelm Freyherrn von Schrödern Fürstliche Schatz- und Rent-Kammer nebst seinem
Nothwendigen Unterricht vom Goldmachen (Leipzig: Fritsch, [1684], 1705), 62: “Dann zum exemple: diejenige,
so ein menstruum aus dem Spiritu urinae machen treffen in ihrer arbeit viel seltsame effectus an, als de lumine per-
petuo und dergleichen, welche andere, und zwar köstlichere tincturen nicht zu wege bringen können.”
79
Gómez, “Bologna Stone,” 8.
384 VERA KELLER

century theories concerning phosphors have been seen as posed “in terms clearly
alien to those of modern chemistry.”80 Those terms differed, of course, but they
were more constitutive of modern chemistry than alien to it.

Notes on contributor
Vera Keller is an assistant professor, historian of science and author of numerous
articles. She is currently working on her second book, a study of Cornelis Drebbel
(1572–1633). Address: Robert D. Clark Honors College, University of Oregon,
1293 University of Oregon, Eugene, OR, 97403–1293 USA. Email: vkeller@
uoregon.edu

80
Gómez, “Bologna Stone,” 4.