Laboratories

Abstract

In 1603, after six years of construction, Count Wolfgang II von Hohenlohe put the finishing touches on a new two-story laboratory in his residence Schloss Weikersheim. Many of the basic elements of his laboratory can be seen in the frontispiece from a work of theosophical alchemy, Amphitheatrum sapientiae aeternae (Amphitheater of Eternal Wisdom, 1609), by the physician and alchemist Heinrich Khunrath (1560–1605); see Figure 13.1. Although this frontispiece foregrounds the spiritual dimension of alchemy (for example, in the kneeling figure of the alchemist), it also illustrates the practical tools of the alchemical laboratory that Khunrath would have known from his work with Central European princes and alchemists. As in the frontispiece, Wolfgang II’s roomy laboratory had large, bright windows with extra-deep sills where vessels could be placed, as well as smaller window vents to allow smoke and steam to escape. One corner was occupied by a raised flat stone hearth or forge (like those used by blacksmiths), and, looming over it, a smoke hood, like the one shown in the engraving, to draw away vapors. (This did not, however, protect the laboratory workers from the many poisonous fumes that often billowed up from operations to fill the room.) A large set of fixed bellows mounted at the side of the hearth fanned the coals in the forge and heated the smaller furnaces that were probably contained within it. Connected to the main chimney of the hearth in the Weikersheim laboratory were four brick furnaces, including one called a Faule Heinz , or Lazy Harry, on which many distillations could be carried out simultaneously; an assaying furnace in which refined gold and silver were assayed to determine their purity and ores were tested for metal content; and, probably, a sublimation furnace in which substances were heated until they vaporized and then condensed back to solidity by rapid cooling.

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