Brief Introduction to the Alchemy Thoughts of Famous External Alchemy Masters

Brief Introduction to the Alchemy Thoughts of Famous External Alchemy Masters

1. Ge Hong
   Ge Hong wrote such influential works as Emergency Prescriptions to Keep at Hand and Baopuzi. In Baopuzi, the chapters related to alchemy include "The Fourth Chapter: Golden Elixir", "The Eleventh Chapter: Immortal Medicines" and "The Sixteenth Chapter: Yellow and White". Ge Hong believed that all substances can change, and with appropriate conditions and a persistent spirit, some substances can be refined into precious immortal elixirs and gold through calcination. Therefore, he held an unshakable belief in alchemy and devoted himself to alchemical practices. During specific alchemy processes, he made many new discoveries. For example, he found that heating red mercury sulfide (commonly known as "cinnabar") could separate out mercury, and mercury could combine with sulfur to form mercury sulfide again.
2. Tao Hongjing
   Tao Hongjing developed alchemy during his years of practicing furnace and tripod alchemy, and wrote a specialized alchemical book Methods of Compound Elixirs. Compared with Ge Hong's era, he made significant progress in drug identification and alchemical methods. Through long-term practical experience, Tao Hongjing accumulated a lot of knowledge in inorganic chemistry. He realized that "mercury has raw and cooked forms": the raw form refers to naturally occurring mercury, while the cooked form is obtained by smelting cinnabar. He summarized that mercury can form alloys with metals such as gold and silver, which can be used for gilding and silvering objects. The important alchemical raw materials, yellow lead oxide and white lead carbonate, can be artificially produced: yellow lead oxide is obtained by "calcining lead", and white lead carbonate by "transforming lead". This opened up sources of medicines and promoted the further development of alchemy.
3. Sun Simiao
   Sun Simiao was a renowned "King of Medicine" in the history of Chinese medicine, with rich clinical experience in various disciplines. He never sought official positions in his life, believed in Taoist and Buddhist ethics, opposed the ingestion of mineral stones, advocated alchemy, often went to mountains to collect herbs, and personally engaged in the preparation and refining of medicines. In the process of alchemy, he summarized previous alchemical prescriptions and conventional methods. To reduce the toxicity of gold and stone medicines, Sun Simiao summarized the "fire subduing" method. Among numerous "fire subduing methods", through several combinations and pairings, repeated experiments, and countless failures, he found that a mixture of nitre, sulfur, and charcoal was highly flammable and explosive, capable of collapsing alchemy rooms and injuring people. After several improvements and refinements, black gunpowder was born. Sun Simiao recorded this formula in his work Dan Jing: Method of Subduing Sulfur Internally.