Alchemy was a practice that flourished in ancient civilizations and then in Europe up to the 19th Centuary. The alchemists, or people who practiced alchemy, searched for means to transform ordinary metals like lead into gold.
Alchemy became very popular in the Middle Ages, as gold became more popular, and the ordinary people as well as kings and quuens desired it. Furnaces were lit in gloomy basements of stone castles, and secret experiments were performed with mysterious liquids. Many alchemists believed that a substance they called the 'philosopher's stone' could turn other metals into gold. Needless to say, no one ever discovered such a stone, nor did the experiments of the alchemists meet with any success.
