The Philosopher's Stone by Sabine Baring-Gould

"There are many ways," says Del Rio, "in which the Philosopher's Stone is made. Writers contest with each other which is the right way. Pauladamus opposes the opinion of Brachescus; Villanosanus will have none of the mode of Trevisanus. So one assails another, and all call each other foolish and ignorant. " But however they may have disputed how to make it, no one succeeded in finding the right way, for no one knew where to look for it; and yet the Philosopher's Stone was before all their eyes to be enjoyed by all alike, but to be appropriated by none. This precious stone, which went by various names, the "Universal Elixir," the "Elixir of Life," the "Water of the Sun," was thought to procure to its happy discoverer and possessor riches innumerable, perpetual health, a life exempt from all maladies and cares and pains, and even in the opinion of some -- immortality. It transmuted lead into gold, glass into diamonds, it opened locks, it penetrated everywhere; it was the sovereign remedy to all disease, it was luminous in the darkest night. To fashion it -- so the alchemists said -- gold and lead, iron, antimony, vitriol, sulphur, mercury, arsenic, water, fire, earth, and air were needed; to these must be added the egg of a cock, and the spittle of doves. Really, said one shrewd and satiric writer, it only wanted oil, vinegar, and salt, to make of it a salad.

Now the curious thing is -- as we shall see in the sequel -- the alchemists were not far out in their opinion. All these ingredients, or rather most of them -- the cock's egg and the dove's spittle only excepted -- are to be found combined in the Philosopher's Stone, and only recent science has established this fact.