I

The Fire-drug

FOR MOST PEOPLE IN the West, China is a strange, remote andexotic country of whose history we know little. Until recentlythe most populous state in the world, it is inhabited by a variety of people speaking many different languages and using a script totally unlike any known in Europe. Its history is often assumed, wrongly, to be largely static - an almost endless succession of dynasties all dominated by a large bureaucracy of scholars whoadministered the state. Its ways of thinking seem equallystrange and are largely associated with a philosophy known as 'Confucianism'. This name is a mistake, derived as it is from the ignorance of the Jesuits who first visited China in the sixteenth century. The Chinese scholars told them about aperson called Khung Fu Tzu who was revered as the originatorof ideas about the relationship between people, society and thestate. The Jesuits Latinised this name as 'Confucius' not realising that the Chinese were talking about a 'Master Khung'. Infact, China had been a Buddhist state for almost as long as itwas 'Confucian', and had a history of scientific advance andtechnical invention that was far in advance of the rest of theworld for many centuries.

The origins of gunpowder are found in other philosophical ideas from China, just as influential there as 'Confucianism'. Known as Taoism, this set of ideas, which briefly becamepopular in the West in the 1960s, can be traced back to someof the philosophers of China's 'Warring States' period and, inparticular, the shadowy figure of Lao Tzu who probably wrote the Tao Te Ching ('Canon of the Virtue of the Tao') around 300 BC. These philosophers rejected the courts and growing bureaucracies of the petty states across what is now central China as they fought their endless brutal wars (a history remarkably like that of Europe in the last five centuries).Instead, these scholars withdrew to the countryside to meditateon nature and its ways. They attacked the scholastic knowledgethat dominated 'Confucianism' and advocated greater knowledge of the world of nature and how it operated. They emphasised the unity of nature and its independence of human standards. Unlike Christian thought, Taoism had no concept that there could be 'laws of nature ' that were imposed from above by an omnipotent 'God' whom all the creatures in the world had to obey. They wanted to observe nature and learn to understand it, not to take action against its principles. They let events work themselves out according to their own principles. Taoism, like many other traits in Chinese thinking, wasdown-to-earth and practical - knowledge was not theoretical but based on experiment and observation.

Taoists were obsessed with change, in all its forms.They believed that the natural world reflected the basic principle of the Tao - unceasing cycles of alteration. Another defining characteristic of Taoist thinking was that it did notbelieve in a separation of spirit and matter - something that itdeemed to be impossible. Again this is very different from the dominant western way of thinking which sees a clear distinction between the two. Neither did Taoists believe in a single, permanent individual soul. For them, immortality was not about the survival of the soul - they thought immortality was bound to be both spiritual and material because everything was anorganic whole composed of both elements. Taoists had no concept that ethics and behaviour could affect an individual's position in any after life - all humans were a mix of good and bad. Immortality could be achieved not through morality butthrough practice and by controlling and modifying the naturaland variable cycles of change. By this means, human life couldbe extended so that immortality would be obtained. The process of ageing could be undermined by expelling the 'Three Worms' from within the body so as to create a hsien or 'true man' who became physically lightened and ethereal while living for everin a young body. Such people would move across the earth, living in the mountains and forests, rarely meeting 'ordinary' humans. The most adept would become thien hsien and live ascelestial immortals among the stars. Within a century of the origins of Taoism many people were convinced that individuals had achieved hsien status. The transformation into a hsien would not be 'unnatural' - it was no more than a type of themetamorphosis already observed in nature in the case of manyinsects as they changed, for example, from caterpillars into butterflies.

For Taoists, long life and possibly immortality could beachieved through certain practices - breathing exercises, exposure of the body to sunlight (in the case of men) or moonlight (in the case of women), mild gymnastics and certain sexualpractices such as retention of semen. However, many people,in particular emperors and high officials, did not have the timeto indulge in these prolonged exercises. Taoists therefore searched for a short-cut that would expel the 'Three Worms' and achieve immediate immortality. At some time in the third century BC two men, Hsü Fu and Han Chung, set sail for the Eastern Ocean to search for the islands of Phêng-Lai where, it was believed, the immortality-giving drug could be found. They were never seen again. Thereafter, the search for immortalityconcentrated on recipes for various elixirs.

Most of these elixirs were mixtures of dangerousmetallic compounds derived from arsenic, mercury and lead. Taoist advice was that perseverance was vital in achievingimmortality and any adverse symptoms from the elixir were merely signs that the mixture was beginning to work inremoving the poisons from the body. The sixth-century AD text'Records of the Rock Chamber' advised:

After taking an elixir, if your face and body itch as though insects were crawling over it, if your hands andfeet swell dropsically, if you cannot stand the smell of food and bring it up after you have eaten it, if you feel you were going to be sick most of the time, if you experience weakness in the four limbs, if you have to go often to the latrine, or if your head and stomach violently ache - do not be alarmed or disturbed. All these effects are merely proof that the elixir you are taking is successfully dispelling your latent disorders.

Not surprisingly, cases of elixir poisoning were common.

In about the first century BC the development of elixirs and the search for a way of making gold came together. 'Base' metals, which rust, corrode and decay, were thought to be like mortal men. The 'philosopher's stone ' which would transform base metal into indestructible gold would also, the Taoistal chemists believed, transform human bodies. Artificial gold would be the container for the immortality elixir as the alchemist Li Shao-Chün told the great Han emperor Wu-Tiin 130 BC: 'I will show you how to make vessels of yellow gold and from these you may drink and achieve immortality.'The search for an immortality elixir and the 'philosopher's stone ' formed the basis for the alchemists' efforts for centuries. From China many of these ideas spread to the Islamic world (from which our word 'alchemy' is derived) and from there to Europe. The influence of these Chinese patterns of thought can be seen in the work of Roger Bacon (c. 1214-94), an English Franciscan friar, who was one of the first Europeans to know of the existence of gunpowder. In 1266 he wrote inhis Opus Majus: 'That medicine which will remove all impurities and corruptibilities from the lesser metals will also, in theopinion of the wise, take off so much of the corruptibility of the body that human life may be prolonged for many centuries. 'The unavailing search for the 'philosopher's stone' was to continue to dominate European science into the eighteenth century.

Researches in China took place across the country in small workshops as Taoists isolated new chemicals, searched for new combinations and tested them by burning and other physical and chemical processes. These were practical men who worked with a handful of assistants and reported to each other as they carried out their search for the one mix of substances that would provide immortality. They tried every possible weird and wonderful mixture of substances until, entirely by accident, they discovered the first explosive in human history- gunpowder. This black powder is a mixture of three substances - charcoal, sulphur and saltpetre. Had it not beenfor the search for the immortality elixir, these substances would probably never have been combined because such a combination seemed to serve no obvious purpose. (The explosive power of this mixture depends on the proportions of the three substances and in particular on a high percentage of saltpetre.)

Charcoal had been known for thousands of years. Sulphur was, according to the 'Pharmacopoeia of the Heavenly Husbandman', known and used from the second century AD- the Taoists believed it strengthened the male essence andcured female frigidity. Saltpetre is potassium nitrate and isusually found mixed with similar sodium and magnesium salts. It forms in high temperatures and high humidity where organic material, especially excreta, can break down. The best placesto find saltpetre are therefore in old damp cellars and stables, and in warm climates it may be found lying on the soil (for example, in parts of India and China). A Chinese pharmacopoeia described it as follows:

It is a 'ground frost', an efflorescence of the soil. It occurs among mountains and marshes, and in winter months it looks like frost on the ground. People sweep it up, collect it and dissolve it in water, after which they boil it to evaporate it. The crystals look like the pins of a hair-ornament. Good ones can be about half aninch [12.5 mm] in length.

In China saltpetre was known as hsiao shih, which means 'solvestone'. It was recognised as early as the second century BC andwithin a few centuries a manuscript known as 'Lives of the Famous Hsien' reported that immense longevity had been obtained through eating 'solve-stone '.

The first known reference to the mixing of saltpetre and sulphur is in the work of the alchemist Ko Hung who lived around AD 300. Some three and a half centuries later, in about 650, the great Sui alchemist Sun Ssu-Mo gave a recipe forcombining equal portions of sulphur and saltpetre by grindingthem together. He also added the charred pods of the soapbeantree (which would have provided charcoal). His recipe was very close to some of the earliest forms of gunpowder. In 808 Chao Nai-An compiled 'The Complete Compendium onthe Perfect Treasure of Lead, Mercury, Wood and Metal'. This contains a recipe for a 'Method of Subduing Alum by Fire ' by mixing saltpetre and sulphur with a dried plant material known as 'aristolochia'. The latter provided carbon and would be enough to cause sudden ignition and flames, though not an explosion. This mixture is certainly a form of gunpowder.

At this period the Chinese alchemists were clearly experimenting with various different mixtures in their search for the immortality elixir. Some of the mixtures were close enough to gunpowder to be dangerous. This is confirmed by the anonymous 'Classified Essentials of the Mysterious Tao ofthe True Origin of Things', written about 850. This details thirty-five elixir formulae and procedures which, though popular, were wrong, dangerous and discreditable to Taoism. Alchemists were therefore advised not to use them. At least three of these recipes involved saltpetre and would have produced a form of gunpowder. The manual says:

Some have heated together sulphur, realgar [arsenicdisulphide] and saltpetre with honey [if dried this would provide carbon]. Smoke and flames result, so that their hands and faces have been burnt, and even the whole house where they were working burned down.

We can therefore date the emergence of the earliest forms of gunpowder to some time around AD 800.

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Thus in their search for an immortality elixir the Taoistalchemists by chance stumbled across an unlikely mixture of substances - charcoal, sulphur and saltpetre - that would burn easily and, if the proportions were right, explode. The Chinese term yao always means 'drug' or 'medicine ', and its use in theChinese name for gunpowder, huo yao, which means 'fire-drug' or 'fire-medicine ', accurately reflected its true origins. This shows gunpowder's derivation from this mysterious alchemical background and indicates that its explosive potential was an unexpected property. Gunpowder remained a medicine for centuries, even though it did not provide immortality. In 1596 Li Shih-Chen wrote 'The Great Pharmacopoeia' and described huo yao as follows:

Gunpowder has a bitter-sour sapidity, and is slightly toxic. It can be used to treat sores and ringworm, it kills worms and insects, and it dispels damp and hot epidemic fevers.

Nevertheless, as so often in human history, the military potential of a supposedly 'peaceful' invention was rapidly recognised.Within little more than a century of its discovery gunpowder was being used by the Chinese in a huge variety of weapons.It was the first stage in the transformation of warfare (andsocieties) across the globe.