682 CE), a famous medical specialist respectfully called “King of Medicine” by later generations, discusses in detail the creation of elixirs for immortality (mercury, sulfur, and the salts of mercury and arsenic are prominent, and most are poisonous) as well as those for curing certain diseases and the fabrication of precious stones. The most famous Chinese alchemical book, the Danjing yaojue (Essential Formulas of Alchemical Classics) attributed to Sun Simiao (c. Gold was considered particularly potent, as it was a non-tarnishing precious metal the idea of potable or drinkable gold is found in China by the end of the third century BC. The ancient Chinese believed that ingesting long-lasting precious substances such as jade, cinnabar or hematite would confer some of that longevity on the person who consumed them. When Shi Huang Di visited, he brought 3000 young girls and boys, but none of them ever returned. In the Qin Dynasty, Qin Shi Huang sent Taoist alchemist Xu Fu with 500 young men and 500 young women to the eastern seas to find the elixir, but he never came back (legend has it that he found Japan instead). In ancient China, many emperors sought the fabled elixir with varying results. Xu Fu’s first expedition to the Mount of the immortals. “The liquid is of significant value for the study of ancient Chinese thoughts on achieving immortality and the evolution of Chinese civilization,” Shi added. “It is the first time that mythical ‘immortality medicines’ have been found in China,” said Shi Jiazhen, head of the Institute of Cultural Relics and Archaeology in Luoyang. The elixirs themselves, despite their widespread popularity among the dead, are not often found in their resting places. The last killed by the search for immortality was the Yongzheng Emperor in 1735. Qin Shi Huang, the first emperor of a united China who was entombed with the great Terracotta Army in a mausoleum complete with rivers of mercury, is said to have been the first emperor to die (in 210 B.C.) from elixir poisoning. Taiost literature records many nobles, even emperors, having died from elixir of life poisoning. Mercury and lead were the foundation of most formulae and it might seem ironic that they are both deadly poisons but it isn’t, really, because the power to end life was seen as the other side of their putative power to extend life.
that describe the artificial creation of elixirs of life. There are surviving texts going back to the second century B.C. Waidan, meaning external elixir, was the earliest branch of Chinese alchemy, focusing on the achievement of immortality by combining metals and chemicals in a bronze crucible. These are two ingredients that according to ancient Taoist texts could be used to create an elixir of immortality. In fact it is a mixture of potassium nitrate and alunite, an aluminium potassium sulfate mineral. Laboratory testing on the fluid has found that the preliminary identification of grain wine was incorrect. The pot-bellied bronze vessel’s lid was still in place, and the seal was firm enough to prevent its evaporation. This find was of particular note because so much of the liquid had survived. Other tombs dating to the Western Han Dynasty (202 B.C.- 8 A.D.) have been found to include rice or sorghum wine stored in elaborate bronze vessels and the alcohol was known to have played an important ritual role in funerary practices of the period. It was yellow and smelled of alcohol, similar in appearance and scent to rice wine. When archaeologists discovered 3.5 liters of fluid in a bronze vessel in a 2,000-year-old tomb in Luoyang, central China, last October, they thought it was wine. Alchemists in various ages and cultures sought the means of formulating the elixir. This elixir was also said to cure all diseases. The elixir of life, also known as elixir of immortality and sometimes equated with the philosopher’s stone, is a potion that supposedly grants the drinker eternal life and/or eternal youth.
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