[CHEM-HIST] Open Access articles available from AMBIX

[Megan Piorko]

Dear members,

I would like to draw your attention to the following Open Access articles published in Ambix the Journal for the History of Alchemy and Chemistry, available online at https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/yamb20

A new Edited Collection is available open access through July, in conjunction with the 13th International Conference on the History of Chemistry held in Vilnius, Lithuania:
https://www.tandfonline.com/journals/yamb20/collections/Centres-and-Peripheries-of-Chymical-Knowledge

Centres and Peripheries of Chymical Knowledge: Tracing Traditions of Alchemy and Chemistry in Eastern Europe
>From the patronage networks of Rudolph II to the military campaigns of World Wars I and II, chymical knowledge was highly sought after in Eastern Europe, especially as a means to exert political power. The articles featured in this collection trace historical evidence of Eastern European chymical traditions, from a fourteenth-century Bohemian alchemical manuscript to twentieth-century global approaches to chemistry, to illustrate the mutual influence of Western and Eastern European chymical knowledge exchange. The insularity of Eastern European science before the establishment of the port of Archangel was not intentional but forced by feuding neighbouring lands. Ivan the Terrible attempted to create a Moscow medical school, but the Western European instructors he tried to bring in were blocked by the Danes and Swedes. The establishment of the port of Archangel in 1553 expedited cross-cultural chymical exchange between Eastern and Western Europe. As a result, the Russo-English trading organization Muscovy Company formed in 1555. By the 1620s, Tsar Mikhail Romanov had succeeded in forming the Apothecary Chancery at his court in Moscow. While there has been a history of Eastern European monarchs importing courtly alchemists from the West, including both John Dee (1527-1608) and his son Arthur Dee (1579-1651), many influential chymical practitioners were born and worked in Eastern Europe-such as Polish alchemist Michael Sendivogius (1566-1636), Hungarian Janos Banfihunyadi (1576-1646), Mikhail Vasil'evich Lomonosov (1711-1765) of St. Petersburg, Russian born chemists Nikolai Nikolaevich Zinin (1812-1880) and Dmitrii Ivanovich Mendeleeve (1834-1907), as well as many notable Soviet chemists of the twentieth century.

Additionally, an article in the Text and Commentary series has been published Open Access in the most recent issue of Ambix:
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/00026980.2023.2201744

Deciphering the Hermeticae Philosophiae Medulla: Textual Cultures of Alchemical Secrecy
This article presents the decryption, historical analysis, and alchemical interpretation of an alchemical cipher found in a shared notebook of John and Arthur Dee (British Library MS Sloane 1902). The cipher is an early example of a Bellaso/Della Porta/Vigenère type, a strong encryption method which was historically deemed indecipherable. The essay explores the medical and alchemical context for the manuscript into which the cipher was copied and provides the transcription, plaintext solution (in Latin), and English translation of the encrypted text. Further, it interprets the enciphered text through the lens of alchemical practice and provides evidence for the dissemination of this cipher as part of a larger alchemical knowledge network.


Meg Piorko, PhD
Distinctive Collections Librarian
Falvey Library, Villanova University

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