Starkey, George

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STARKEY, GEORGE

(b. Bermuda, 1628; d, London, England. (1665)

medicine, alchemy.

Starkey, who used his family name Stirk until adopting the more familiar cognomen found on his title pages, was the son of George Stirk, a Puritan minister in Bermuda, and Elizabeth Painter. During his youth he developed an interest in natural history and devised experiments to test the theory of the spontaneous generation of insects. While a student at Harvard College, he began the study of medicine and alchemy and was soon attracted to Helmont’s doctrines. He graduated in 1646, took the master’s degree, and practiced medicine in the Boston area, where he married a daughter of Israel Stoughton. Sometimes relying on his friend John Winthrop, Jr., for books, chemicals, and apparatus, he pursued research along Helmontian lines.

In 1650 Starkey emigrated to England. Associating with Samuel Hartlib’s circle of investigators, he engaged in a wide range of experiments, including the production of alchemical metals and the preparation of chemical medicines. Starkey told Hartlib’s friends of his contact with an “adept” in New England from whom he supposedly had obtained the secret of transmutation and a number of unpublished alchemical treatises. The account was expanded and clothed in more mystification as part of Starkey’s contribution to alchemical verse, The Marrow of Alchemy (1654–1655).

With the publication of Natures Explication and Helmont’s Vindication (1657), Starkey entered the dispute between those physicians who adhered to the “Paracelsian compromise” and those who advocated more frequent use of chemical remedies. Starkey’s book, an outspoken defense of Helmontian doctrines, was followed by Pyrotechny Asserted and Illustrated (1658), in which he continued the style of rhetoric that won him the friendship only a small fraternity. Starkey claimed that his books were based on the experimental method and a desire to reform the state of medicine, but only vague processes were given for his medicaments.

After a brief excursion into the polemical exchange accompanying the Restoration, Starkey returned to iatrochemical controversies. He frequently resorted to print to combat fellow chemical practitioners, both to secure priority for his own medicines and to condemn those whose preparations invited censure of the chemical cause. A last exchange with the so-called “Galenists” was cut short by the Plague in 1665. Starkey remained in London to treat victims of the disease, of which he himself died at an unknown date.

During his lifetime, only one of his “American” alchemical manuscripts was published, apparently without his permission, but a number of treatises were printed after his death under the pseudonym Eirenaeus Philalethes. Several of these works on the theory and practice of transmutation and related matters became classics of alchemical literature, especially the Introitus apertus (1667 appeared in English as Secrets Reveal’d (1669) Evidence points to Starkey as the probable author of the tracts, although John Winthrop, Jr., may have served as the inspiration for the story of the New England adept.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

I .Original Works. Starkey’s The Marrow of Alchemy (London, 1654– 1655) was published in 2 pts, under the pseudonym “Eirenaeus Philoponos Philalethes,” Natures Explication and Helmont’s Vindication (London, 1657) and Pyrotechny Asserted and Illustrated (London, 1658) were followed by political publications concerning the Restoration. Other polemical tracts were The Admirable Efficacy, and Almost Incredible Virtue of True Oyl, Which is Made of Sulphur-Vive (London, 1660), George Starkeys Pill Vindicated From the Unlearned Alchymist [London, 1663 or 1664]; A Brief Examination and Censure of Several Medicines (London, 1664); and A Smart Scourge for a Silly. Sawcy Fool ([London], 1664). Starkey’s An Epistolar Discourse to the Learned and Deserving Author of GalenoPale was printed with George Thomson’s IIAANOIINITMO? or, a Gag for Johnson (London, 1665), Liquor Alchahest (London, 1675), J. Astell, ed., was a posthumous work.

The most influential of the “Phrialethes” essays was Introitus apertus (Amsterdam, 1667), printed in English as Secrets Reveal’d (London. 1669); also important are those collected in W. Cooper, ed., Ripley Reviv’d (London, 1678), Others are in M. Birrius, ed., Tres tractatus de metallorum transmutatione (Amsterdam, 1668), and in W. Cooper, ed., Opus tripartitum de philosophorum arcanis (London, 1678). Philalethes’ The Secret of the Immortal Liquor Called Alkahest (London, 1683) was advertised as a separate imprint by bookseller William Cooper and was included in his Collectanea chymica (London, 1684).

II . Secondary Literature. On Starkey, see the following, listed chronologically: John L. Sibley, Biographical Sketches of Graduates of Harvard University, I (Cambridge, Mass., 1873), 131–137; John Ferguson, “The Marrow of Alchemy,” in Journal of the Alchemical Society,3 (1915), 106–129; George H. Turnbull, “George Stirk, Philosopher by Fire,” in Publications of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, 38 (1949), 219–251; Ronald S. Wilkinson.“George Starkey, Physician and Alchemist,” in Ambix, II (1963). 121–152: and “The Problem of the Identity of Eirenaeus Philalethes,” ibid., 12 (1964 24–43; J. W. Hamilton-Jones, “The Identity of Eirenaeus Philalethes,” ibid.,13 (1965), 52–53; Ronald S. Wilkinson, “The Hartlib Papers and Seventeenth-Century Chemistry, Part II : George Starkey,” ibid., 17 (1970), 85–110; “Further Thoughts on the Identity of Eirenaeus Philalethes,” ibid., 19 (1972), 204–208; “Some Bibliographical Puzzles Concerning George Starkey,” ibid., 20 (1973), 235–244; and “George Starkey, an Early Seventeenth-Century American Entomologist,” in Great Lakes Entomologist, 6 (1973), 59–64. The most recent discussion of the Philalethes matter is in Wilkinson. The Younger John Winthrop and Seventeenth-Century Science (London, 1975), ch. 6.