Chapter Ninety-Eight: The Way of Danwai
Just like the senior sister said, for us Taoists, alchemy is a kind of practice, and for the whole society, or the whole world, alchemy is a product that combines medicine and technology, and in the process of development, many stories have been born, and many theories have been obtained. Pen, fun, pavilion www. biquge。 info
From the very beginning, there have been many famous artists in alchemy, such as Ge Hong, alias Bao Puzi, Jin Dynasty people, Danyang Jurong people, author of "Behind the Elbow Saving the Pawn", "Hu Puzi" and other hand-me-down works. Among them, the book "Hug Puzi" is divided into two parts, inner and outer, and 20 volumes, involving alchemy in the fourth Jindan, the eleventh immortal medicine, and the sixteenth in Huangbai. Ge Hong believes that all substances can be changed, and as long as there are appropriate conditions and the spirit of persistent pursuit, some substances may become precious elixir and gold through smelting. Therefore, he has an unwavering belief in alchemy and is unswervingly engaged in the practice of alchemy.
In the specific process of alchemy, he made many new discoveries. For example, Ge Hong had already discovered at that time: the red mercury sulfide (that is, the commonly known dansha) was heated. mercury can be separated; Mercury plus sulfur can be combined to form mercury sulfide. This shows that Ge Hong discovered the reversible reaction phenomenon of precipitating mercury from mercury sulfide and synthesizing mercury sulfide with mercury and sulfur in alchemy practice.
Another master is Tao Hongjing, Tao Hongjing liked to read Ge Hong's "Legend of the Immortals" when he was a teenager, and he was quite influenced by his "learning immortals to maintain health, and he has always paid attention to it." In 492 A.D., when he was thirty-seven years old, he resigned from his fixed position, lived in seclusion in Jurong Maoshan Mountain, searched for immortal medicine, cultivated alchemy, traveled all over the famous mountains and rivers, developed alchemy in his many years of furnace fire Danding career, and wrote the alchemy book "Hedan French Style", which made more significant progress in the identification of drugs and alchemy methods than in the Ge Hong era.
Through long-term practice, Tao Hongjing has accumulated a lot of knowledge of inorganic chemistry, and he realized that "mercury is raw and cooked", and its living refers to naturally produced mercury; Those who are familiar with it are obtained by smelting cinnabar. It is also concluded that mercury can be alloyed with other metals, such as gold and silver, and can be plated with gold and silver on items. For the important raw materials of alchemy, Huang Dan and Hu powder, can be artificially made, "made of boiled lead" to obtain Huang Dan, "made of lead" can be obtained Hu powder, so as to open up the source of medicine, promote the further development of alchemy.
In the history of alchemy, there is a more familiar master who is Sun Simiao. Sun Simiao is a native of Jingzhaohua in the Tang Dynasty (now Yaoxian, Shaanxi), born in 581 A.D., died in 682 A.D., he is a well-known folk doctor in the history of Chinese medicine, has a very rich clinical practice experience in various disciplines, he has not sought a career in his life, believes in Taoism, Buddhism etiquette, opposes serving stones, advocating alchemy; He often went up the mountain to collect medicines and personally carried out the cultivation and refining of medicines. In the process of alchemy, the alchemy prescriptions and conventional methods of the predecessors were summarized. In order to reduce the toxicity of Jinshi drugs, Sun Simiao once summed up the method of "ambushing fire". When he used sulfur, arsenic and other gold and stone drugs, in order to reduce the toxicity of these drugs, he deliberately made the drugs easy to ignite and burn by themselves, so as to remove their toxicity. After the fire is extinguished, half a catty of raw and cooked charcoal will be stir-fried with half a catty of raw and cooked charcoal until half of the charcoal is eliminated. At that time, the alchemists' "fire method" for gold and stone drugs was basically the same. In the many "fire ambush methods", through a number of combinations and compatibility, repeated experiments, from countless blood lessons, it is summed up that saltpeter, sulfur, charcoal mixed together, it is very easy to catch fire and explode, blow up the Dan house, and injure the crowd, after several improvements and perfections, black gunpowder will come to the fore.
Speaking of which, I admired my sister's knowledge even more, and also had a deeper understanding of the influence of alchemy on Chinese culture, I really didn't expect Taoist alchemy to play such an important role in the development of stunts.
(To be continued)