Hermes Trismegistus, the “thrice great,” demands place at the beginning of this collection, not for reasons of “actual” existence, scientific dating, and absolute chronology, but by virtue of the deeply rooted psychological appeal of myth, legend, and tradition. Long identified as the Greek counterpart of the Egyptian Thoth, the god of wisdom, Hermes was known throughout the ancient world both for his religious and philosophical wisdom and his seer-like understanding of the most obscure areas of human speculation and experience: astrology, magic, the secrets of plants and stones, and alchemy. Because he was also credited with giving laws and letters to the Egyptians, his triple greatness consisted of preeminence as priest, philosopher, and king. These roles, combined with notions of Hermes’ extreme antiquity – his lifetime was variously calculated according to the times of Atlas, Prometheus, Orpheus, Noah and Moses – assured the eponymous founder of hermeticism a high place in the wisdom tradition that extended down to Plato.

As might be expected, an extraordinary number of writings were attributed to Hermes, including the “philosophical” or “theoretical” treatises that comprise the Corpus Hermeticum along with the Latin Asclepius. In addition, a vast number of “technical” hermetica – treatises and fragments on the practical aspects of astrology, alchemy, sympathetic magic, talismans, invocations, and the like – passed under his name, including the famously enigmatic Emerald Table (or Tabula Smaragdina) printed below. In this brief tract the secrets of the preparation of the philosopher's stone were thought to be cryptically set forth on an emerald tablet.

On 14 February 1727/28, Humphrey Newton wrote to John Conduitt:

The experimenter in question was not a deluded alchemist pursuing ignes fatui in a squalid workhouse, such as one finds in paintings by Brueghel or Teniers, but Sir Isaac Newton. Thanks to much pioneering study in the last quarter century, it is now widely known that this great investigator of light and optics, planetary motion, mathematics, and physics, was also a tireless experimenter in matters alchemical. The late Professor Dobbs has stated that “most of [Newton's] great powers were poured out upon church history, theology, ‘the chronology of ancient kingdoms,’ prophecy, and alchemy” (Foundations 6) – not upon “scientific” interests.

In 1655, Samuel Hartlib, the educational reformer and friend of Milton and Pepys, published a small collection of miscellaneous tracts entitled Chymical, Medicinal, and Chyrurgical Addresses. One exception to the general anonymity of the nine works he included is Gabriel Plattes's short piece bearing the long title, A Caveat for Alchymists, or, a Warning to all ingenious Gentlemen, whether Laicks or Clericks, that study for the finding out of the Philosophers Stone; shewing how that they need not to be cheated of their Estates, either by the perswasion of others, or by their own idle conceits. Very little is known about Plattes, other than that he, like Hartlib, was interested in improving the practical arts of agriculture and mining and published a few titles on these topics before the Restoration. He is said to have died in poverty and neglect (see the DNB, s.v. “Plattes, Gabriel”). Plattes makes his didactic purpose in writing the Caveat abundantly clear at the beginning and end of the tract; we suspect, however, that entertainment – including a wholly unsatisfactory summary of Chaucer's Canon's Yeoman's Tale in the “fourth Cheat” – was no less important. The text, slightly abbreviated and modernized, is taken from Hartlib's collection.

Despite the fact that Plato authored no dialogues that dealt with alchemy as such, he is perhaps the one to whom more spurious alchemical works were attributed than any other ancient source except Hermes Trismegistus (see Singer, below). His name was also cited frequently by later writers as a revered alchemical authority, and it is quite possible that the dialogue form itself – so popular with alchemical authors – had its basis in the Platonic model. The reasons for this pseudonymous popularity are interesting and instructive. The names of Plato, Aristotle, Raymund Lull, Geber and others were frequently appropriated by lesser alchemical authors who sought to make their works appear important by attaching them to eminent authorities past or present. In the case of Plato, however, there were other more compelling reasons for the association with alchemy. Alchemy's existence and credibility depended heavily on “platonic” ideas and doctrines that were readily available – although not exclusively so – in the Timaeus, Plato's Creation account. Here, for example, are discussed such important topics as the world's creation following the pattern of a “living creature,” complete with body and soul; the Four Elements theory (not original to Plato) and the elements’ circle of interconvertibility; the world soul or anima mundi, and the relationship between form and matter, all of which were theoretically relevant.

Stephanos of Alexandria exerted a powerful influence on the rhetorical practice of Greek writers of the seventh and eighth centuries, one that is visible in four alchemical poems often preserved together in manuscript under the names of Heliodoros, Theophrastos, Hierotheos and Archelaos. Close analysis of style and content has led to the conclusions that these poems are the work of one anonymous writer who lived after the time of Stephanos, and that all are versifications of passages from his Great and Sacred Art of the Making of Gold. The following poem ascribed to Theophrastos was probably written by a Byzantine sophist between the years 700 and 900 AD.

In the commentary accompanying his translation of the poem, C. A. Browne describes the radical change in the style of scientific (and alchemical) writing that occurs in the last centuries of the first millennium:

Despite rhetorical extravagance, culminating in the outburst of praise, “O work divine, well-pleasing and concise!,” this poem attributed to Theophrastos is interesting not only for its approach to the mysteries of alchemy but for the light that it throws on the Sophists.

Since the early sixteenth century, reactions to Theophrastus Philippus Aureolus Bombastus von Hohenheim or Paracelsus have often been as contentious and controversial as the subject himself. Both enfant terrible and revolutionary genius in his formulation of new medical theories and practical cures and procedures, the Swiss-born Paracelsus continued to provoke violent disagreement long after his death in 1541. In addition to medicine and surgery, he received early training in mining, metallurgy, and alchemy; his peripatetic education, like his later career, led him to many locations throughout Europe. Although Paracelsus practiced healing, lectured widely, and wrote voluminously on medical topics, his controversial views and disputatious manner made publication of his ideas rare until after his death. His major contribution to alchemy was its reorientation from gold-making and the pursuit of the philosopher's stone to the formulation and application of medicinal preparations from minerals and chemicals. This shift – combined with his outspoken anti-authoritarianism – necessarily brought him and his followers into conflict with the “official,” academic medical establishment dominated by Galenic physicians and pharmacists who favored herbal medicines (see Allen G. Debus, The English Paracelsians). Paracelsus also wrote in German – not the preferred Latin – and his emphasis on practical experience, experiment, and folk medicine resulted in further alienation.

The following selections from two treatises, Of the Nature of Things and the Aurora (which may be the work of his editor and translator Gerard Dorn), introduce several key Paracelsian ideas, such as the “three-principles theory” (tria prima) of salt, sulphur, and mercury, the making of the homunculus, the generation of metals, the doctrine of signatures, and the role of magic and astrology in his practice of the “Spagyrical Art.”

A recent editor of Robert Fludd describes him as “the most prominent Renaissance Christian Neoplatonist alchemist of his time, and the greatest summarizer and synthesizer of that tradition of his age” (Huffman 13). To these accolades may be added his successful practice of medicine in London – which, despite sharp attacks on Aristotle and Galen, eventually resulted in Fludd's admission to the Royal College of Physicians – and his championing of the Rosicrucians. He was attacked by such giants of the New Philosophy as Kepler, Mersenne, and Gassendi; however, William Harvey and William Gilbert were influential friends. Fludd published extensively but appears to have attracted greatest interest on the Continent; he is best known today for his extraordinarily detailed study of interrelationships between the macrocosm and microcosm, the Utriusque cosmi maioris scilicet et minoris, metaphysica, physica atque technica historia, which directly reflects his religious and philosophical views and, accompanied by its exquisitely detailed engravings, first issued from the de Bry press in Oppenheim in 1617.

A sense of the range of Fludd's thought (with its frequent links to Paracelsus and the Neoplatonists) may be gained from his Mosaicall Philosophy, first published posthumously in Latin in 1638. Here may be noted, for example, his beliefs in the indebtedness of pagan philosophy to the writings of Moses; the Holy Spirit as the origin of all creation, which has its basis in the three “mosaic” principles of light, darkness, and a complex entity known as the “waters”; the world soul or anima mundi; man as microcosm; the doctrine of sympathies and antipathies; and the “magnetical” operation of the notorious cure known as the Weapon Salve.

Zosimos of Panopolis has a much stronger claim to historical reality than any of the other early alchemical writers introduced thus far. He is thought to have lived in the late third and early fourth centuries AD and, like the author of the Dialogue of Cleopatra and the Philosophers, to have been deeply influenced by the tangle of religious and philosophical elements that constituted the culture of Alexandria at that time. Garth Fowden speaks of him as “a man of strong spiritual urges and little conventional scholarship, who moved in an eclectic milieu compounded of Platonism and gnosticism together with Judaism and … the ‘oriental’ wisdom of Hermes and Zoroaster” (120). Although Zosimos and his “spiritual sister” Theosebia are assumed to have had practical experience in alchemical laboratories, they also believed that its primary goal was purificatory and contemplative, esoteric not exoteric. This is apparent in the broadly allusive Visions, where Zosimos's syncretic religious and intellectual environment is reflected in dense allegory, enigmatic expression, and obscure symbolism. In the selection that follows, the dream vision itself – with its motifs of transformation from body into spirit, torture and violence, death and regeneration, and cryptic humanoid figures – has made Zosimos a challenging subject for the Jungian analyst no less than for the student of alchemy or of the fantastic.

In addition to his achievements in medicine and philosophy, the Persian-born Avicenna (“Prince of Physicians,” “Aristotle of the Arabians”) is well known for his studies in mathematics, physics, music, and alchemy. Like Jabir, Avicenna accepted the sulphurmercury theory of the origin of metals in the earth, yet expressed total disbelief in the possibility that the essences of metals could be changed through alchemical transmutation. As we have seen, skepticism about transmutation was not widely shared by other Moslem authorities; nonetheless, Avicenna's position came to be extremely influential, largely as the result of a bibliographical accident. About 1200 the Englishman William of Sareshel translated into Latin a meteorological passage from Avicenna's work, the Kitâb al-Shifâ’ (the Book of the Remedy) and placed it at the end of an earlier translation of Aristotle's Meteorology, where it came to be regarded as the “missing” conclusion to the fourth book. Entitled De Congelatione et Conglutinatione Lapidum or De Mineralibus, this short section was quickly accepted as a genuine Aristotelian work: thus, Avicenna's skeptical attack was launched albeit under the cover of Aristotle's name. The work's authorship remained in question until 1927, when E. J. Holmyard and D. C. Mandeville demonstrated conclusively that De Congelatione was, in fact, “partly a direct translation and partly résumé” (8) of Avicenna's book.

You should not forget to thank the people who have really helped you but whose contributions do not justify authorship. But be specific. When I saw this acknowledgment, I wondered what exactly these persons had done (family names are fictitious):

In the following example it is evident what each person did:

But take care not to give others credit for your own work. Otherwise the reader will wonder what your contribution was.

The often used “wish to thank” can be shortened to “thank.” Avoid using professional or courtesy titles in the acknowledgment. The example above was written accordingly. It also tells us the given name of those acknowledged.

Persons you want to thank should be asked if they are willing to be acknowledged and if they approve the wording you have used to mention them. This is because colleagues who have read and corrected your manuscript may disagree with some of its central points. To acknowledge them could imply their approval of the content of the paper

Always give credit for financial support

When you thank sources of financial assistance, be careful how you present their names.

By writing a working abstract at an early stage, you will provide yourself with a framework for the rest of the article. It will guide you in deciding what to include and what to omit. Then, when you have completed the paper, you can return to the working abstract and recast it in its final form.

Let us consider here what to include. In both types of abstract, the conventional (unstructured) and the formally structured, the same four basic sections are required: Background (including the purpose of the study), Methods, Results, and Conclusions.

The conventional abstract

In the conventional abstract, the four basic components are not identified with explicit headings, which may explain why some authors miss out vital parts. In the worst instance, the abstract contains neither background nor conclusion. Many abstracts written in the conventional manner are uninformative and cause editors much unnecessary editorial trouble. The following abstract, quoted from an article in Contraception, commences directly with the method:

Most journals reporting laboratory studies use the conventional abstract, and it is usually applied to Case Reports and Brief Communications. Clinical journals, however, often require a structured abstract for full-length papers.

The structured abstract

The structured abstract differs from the conventional abstract by having a heading for each section.