Jan Baptist van Helmont’s work loomed large over George Starkey for the majority of his career. Moving from New England to London, the Bermuda-born medical practitioner brought Helmontian medicines and theories along for the ride.
They were, ultimately, of little use when the bubonic plague once again arrived in the city, 15 years later. As his peers fled, Starkey remained, believing his knowledge could help cure the spread of England’s last major outbreak of the black death.
Starkey succumbed to the disease the same year.
He was, however, far from alone in his faith in Helmont’s work. Two years after Starkey’s death, Sir Isaac Newton wrote in a two-page manuscript that among the variously championed cures for the plague, "the best is a toad suspended by the legs in a chimney for three days, which at last vomited up earth with various insects in it, onto a dish of yellow wax, and shortly after died."
Drawing directly from Helmont’ 1605 treatise, De Peste (On Plague), Newton adds, "Combining powdered toad with the excretions and serum made into lozenges and worn about the affected area, drove away the contagion and drew out the poison.”
Starkey’s career, too, left a profound impact on Newton – though seemingly less so for his work in medicine. Auctioned by Sotheby’s in 1936, a cache of previously unseen work cast a new light on Newton’s occult studies. Labeled “not fit to be printed” upon the great scientist’s 1727 death, the work borrowed significantly from Starkey’s alchemical research, published under the pen name, Eireanus Philalethes (“the peaceful lover of truth”).
The Starkey-inspired work included instructions for concocting sophick mercury. Produced by distilling mercury in combination with heated gold, the material was a foundational ingredient for the development of the philosopher’s stone – which, in turn, was capable of manipulating chemical structures and creating various materials, including gold.
“[W]e cannot understand how a mind of such power, and so nobly occupied with the abstractions of geometry, and the study of the material world, could stoop to be even the copyist of the most contemptible alchemical poetry, and the annotator of a work, the obvious production of a fool and a knave,” biographer David Brewster wrote in 1788. “Such, however, was the taste of the century in which Newton lived, and, when we denounce the mental epidemics of a past age, we may find some palliation of them in those of our own times.”
Most of Newton’s words on the subject have been intentionally forgotten in a bid to maintain the image of a foundational pillar of science. But for him, the distinction between alchemy and the more practical sciences was non-existent. His pioneering work in the optics was littered with references to alchemy. In fact, the notion that compounds can be broken down and reassembled directly informed his counterintuitive discovery that white light is the combination of seven visible colors, rather than their absence.
Newton wrote around one million words on the topic of alchemy, all told. It’s believed that he ultimately carried out Starkey’s experiments, as well as his own versions. One, for distilling lead, was discovered scribbled on the back one of the unpublished manuscripts.
Economist John Maynard Keynes, who purchased the lot, was taken aback by the seemingly unscientific nature of the discoveries. "Newton was not the first of the age of reason,” he would later reflect on the text, “he was the last of the magicians."
Sources:
Isaac Newton's Recipe for Magical 'Philosopher's Stone' Rediscovered https://www.livescience.com/54162-newton-recipe-for-philosophers-stone-rediscovered.html
Isaac Newton, World's Most Famous Alchemist https://www.discovermagazine.com/the-sciences/isaac-newton-worlds-most-famous-alchemist
Isaac Newton’s Lost Alchemy Recipe Rediscovered https://www.nationalgeographic.com/science/article/160404-isaac-newton-alchemy-mercury-recipe-chemistry-science
Newton, The Last Magician https://www.neh.gov/humanities/2011/januaryfebruary/feature/newton-the-last-magician