摘要：Today, when alchemy evokes wizards and crystal balls, it may seem odd to refer to a book of procedures on the transmutation of ordinary metals into gold as a practical laboratory manual free of mysticism. Yet it was alchemy, the most ancient form of chemistry, which first brought the book and the laboratory together. Over a thousand years ago, the Persian physician and alchemist Abū Bakr Muhammad ibn Zakarīyā al-Rāzī (c. 865 - 923) 1 wrote the earliest laboratory manual to reach us in its entirety. He called it the Kitāb al-Asrār or Book of Secrets. The most valuable “secrets” in the Kitāb al-Asrār are organized procedures and written specifications for proportions, temperature, timing, and endpoints, the same strategies for achieving reproducibility that laboratories use today. This paper will demonstrate that there was a continuum of practical laboratory manuals from al-Rāzī’s Kitāb al-Asrār in 920 C. E. to Libavius’s Alchemia published in 1597 C.E., which some historians refer to as the first chemistry textbook. 2
