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Alchemy

Women
Several women appear in the earliest history of alchemy. Michael Maier names four women who were able to make the philosophers' stone: Mary the Jewess, Cleopatra the Alchemist, Medera, and Taphnutia. Zosimos' sister Theosebia (later known as Euthica the Arab) and Isis the Prophetess also played roles in early alchemical texts.

The first alchemist whose name we know was Mary the Jewess ( c.  200 A.D.). Early sources claim that Mary (or Maria) devised a number of improvements to alchemical equipment and tools as well as novel techniques in chemistry. Her best known advances were in heating and distillation processes. The laboratory water-bath, known eponymously (especially in France) as the bain-marie, is said to have been invented or at least improved by her. Essentially a double-boiler, it was (and is) used in chemistry for processes that required gentle heating. The tribikos (a modified distillation apparatus) and the kerotakis (a more intricate apparatus used especially for sublimations) are two other advancements in the process of distillation that are credited to her. Although we have no writing from Mary herself, she is known from the early-fourth-century writings of Zosimos of Panopolis.

Due to the proliferation of pseudepigrapha and anonymous works, it is difficult to know which of the alchemists were actually women. After the Greco-Roman period, women's names appear less frequently in alchemical literature. Women vacate the history of alchemy during the medieval and renaissance periods, aside from the fictitious account of Perenelle Flamel. Mary Anne Atwood's A Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery (1850) marks their return during the nineteenth-century occult revival.

Ogilvie, Marilyn; Harvey, Joy (eds.) (2000). The biographical dictionary of women in science : pioneering lives from ancient times to the mid-20th century. New York: Routledge.

Ray, Meredith K. (2015) Daughters of Alchemy: Women and Scientific Culture in Early Modern Italy. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Medieval Europe (Addition to Existing Section)
Roman Catholic Inquisitor General Nicholas Eymerich's Directorium Inquisitorum, written in 1376, associated alchemy with the performance of demonic rituals, which Eymerich differentiated from magic performed in accordance with scripture.

East Asia
Researchers have found evidence that Chinese alchemists and philosophers discovered complex mathematical phenomena that were shared with Arab alchemists during the medieval period. Discovered in BC China, the "magic square of three" was an propagated to followers of Abū Mūsā Jābir ibn Ḥayyān at some point over the proceeding several hundred years. Other commonalities shared between the two alchemical schools of thought include discrete naming for ingredients and heavy influence from the natural elements. The silk road provided a clear path for the exchange of goods, ideas, ingredients, religion, and many other aspects of life with which alchemy is intertwined.

Early in the fourth century, Ge Hong documented the use of metals, minerals, and elixirs in early Chinese medicine. Hong identified three ancient Chinese documents, titled Scripture of Great Clarity, Scripture of the Nine Elixirs, and Scripture of the Golden Liquor, as texts containing fundamental alchemical information. Hong described alchemy, along with meditation, as the sole spiritual practices that could allow one to gain immortality or transcend. In his work Inner Chapters of the Book of the Master Who Embraces Spontaneous Nature (317 AD), Hong argued that alchemical solutions such as elixirs were preferable to traditional medicinal treatment due to the spiritual protection they could provide.

Following Ge Hong's death, the emphasis placed on external alchemy as a spiritual practice among Chinese Daoists was reduced. In 499 AD, Tao Hongjing argued against Hong's statement that alchemy is as important a spiritual practice as Shangqing meditation. While Hongjing did not deny the ability of alchemical elixirs to grant immortality or provide divine protection, he ultimately the found the Scripture of the Nine Elixirs to be ambiguous and spiritually unfulfilling, and he aimed to implement more accessible practicing techniques.

In the early 700s, Neidan (also known as internal alchemy) was adopted by Daoists as a new form of alchemy. Neidan emphasized appeasing the inner gods that inhabit the human body via by practicing alchemy with compounds found in the body, rather than the mixing of natural resources that was emphasized in early Dao alchemy. For example, saliva was often considered nourishment for the inner gods and didn't require any conscious alchemical reaction to produce. The inner gods were not thought of as physical presences occupying each person, but rather a collection of deities that are each said to represent and protect a specific body part or region. Although those who practiced Neidan prioritized meditation over external alchemical strategies, many of the same elixirs and constituents from previous Daoist alchemical schools of thought continued to be utilized in tandem with meditation. Eternal life remained a consideration for Neidan alchemists, as it was believed that one would become immortal if an inner god were to be immortalized within them.