mistry, in spite of his confident assurance in making far-reaching
statements with regard to it. In order to satisfy myself, I went
through all of the standard histories of chemistry in German, English
and French that are available in the libraries of New York City, and I
failed to find a single one of them which contains anything that might
be supposed even distantly to confirm President White's assertion.

I may have missed it, and shall be glad to know if I have. I cannot do
more than cite certain of them that should have it very prominently,
if Dr. White's assertion is to be taken at its face value. Here are
some standard historians whom I have searched in vain for the
declaration that all of them should have.

Kopp, who is the German historian of chemistry, mentions the fact that
there was much less cultivation of chemistry during the fourteenth
century than during the thirteenth, but makes no mention of the bull
of Pope John as being responsible for it. There are curious cycles of
interest in particular departments of science, with intervals of
comparative lack of interest that can only be explained by the
diversion of human mind to other departments of study. This seems to
have happened with regard to chemistry in the fourteenth century.

{132}

Hoefer, the French historian of chemistry, mentions the fact that Pope
John XXII. took severe measures against the alchemists who then
wandered throughout the country, seeking to enrich themselves at the
expense of the credulity of the people. He evidently knew of this
decree then, but he says nothing of its forbidding or being
misinterpreted, so as to seem to forbid chemical investigation.
Thomson, the English historian of chemistry, has no mention of any
break in the development of chemical science, caused by any action of
the Popes, though, to the surprise doubtless of most readers, he
devotes considerable space to the history of chemical investigation
during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. Ernst von Meyer
mentions the fact that alchemy was abused by charlatans, in order to
make pretended gold and silver, and notes that there was not so much
interest in chemistry in the fourteenth as in the thirteenth century,
but does not ascribe this fact to the bull of Pope John.

I expected at least that I should find something with regard to the
question of the possible influence of the bull in Berthelot's "History
of Chemistry in the Middle Ages." [Footnote 17] But