Transmutation in 17th-Century Alchemical Texts

This paper explores the ways in which seventeenth-century alchemical texts were materially manipulated to create new knowledge by means of scribal marginalia, changing textual medium, and recycling images. Seventeenth-century readers altered alchemical texts through use and reuse which subsequently altered the alchemical ideas presented in the original text. This paper uses specific examples from canonical seventeenth-century alchemical texts to illustrate the tactics that the readers and producers of these texts employed to present and comprehend alchemical knowledge, showing the library as an integral space for alchemical learning.