The philosopher stone is a substance that according to the believers in the alchemy would have extraordinary properties, like the capacity to transmute vulgar gold metals.

 

 Their origins seem to be in one old alchimist theory that it proposed to analyze the Aristotelian elements in terms of his four "basic qualities": heat, cold, dryness and humidity. The fire would be hot and dry, the cold and dry Earth, the cold and humid water and the hot and humid air. Still more, the theory proposes that each metal is a combination of the four principles. Her the transmutation phenomenon is come off, that is to say, the change of the nature of an element based on the change in its qualities.

The philosopher stone, or to elixir of life was something anxiously looked for and coveted because wonderful virtues assumed to him, not only the one to be able to the gold but the one to cure some diseases and to grant immortality. For the gold manufacture a material looked for that facilitated the mixture of mercury and sulphur because it assumed that that was the guessed right way. From that mixture they would find the noble metal.

 

The alchemists, besides to look for with fruition elixir of the life, also looked for a remedy that could be prepared in the laboratory, able to cure all the diseases.