It quotes many Taoist thoughts, many of which refer to the theory and practice of health preservation. Compared with western alchemy, China's alchemy pays more attention to how to achieve immortality. After Qin Shihuang unified the six countries, China sent people to the sea to seek the elixir of life. Emperor Wu of the Han Dynasty himself was also keen on seeking immortals and elixirs. During the Eastern Han Dynasty, alchemy developed further, and a large number of alchemists emerged, such as Wei Boyang, who wrote The Book of Changes, a magical device, to illustrate the theory of immortality. Later, Tao Hongjing, the alchemist of Jin Dynasty, wrote a real patent. In the Tang Dynasty, alchemy combined with Taoism and entered its heyday. At this time, Sun Simiao, an alchemist, wrote The Secret of the Fontaine. These alchemical works have a lot of chemical knowledge. According to statistics, * * * has more than 60 kinds of chemical elements, and there are many records about chemical changes. Of course, this statistic is not complete enough, because not only animal and plant medicines are not counted, but even from the perspective of epigraphy, I am afraid there are more than 60 kinds.
However, most so-called "panaceas" are made of heavy metals such as lead and mercury. If people eat it, they will not only die, but also be poisoned.
In China, as in other places, alchemy has two creeds: first, I believe that other metals can be turned into gold; Second, I believe that taking elixir of life can make you immortal.
Modern science has proved that alchemy is not feasible, because gold is a metal element with atomic order 79, not a compound. But as a pioneer of modern chemistry, it plays an active role in the history of chemical development. Through alchemy, people have accumulated experience in chemical experiments, invented a variety of experimental instruments and learned a lot about natural minerals. In Europe, alchemy became the basis of the emergence and development of modern chemistry.
Carl Gustav Jung, the founder of modern analytical psychology, believes that ancient alchemy is actually a projection behavior of natural phenomena based on people's own spiritual development.
However, if nuclear fusion or fission is used, other elements can indeed be converted into gold, but it is not economical and requires huge energy, so no one has adopted this method of alchemy yet.