Despite being initially intrigued by Stephen Emmens' amazing claim, Sir William Crookes was first and foremost a scientist. Along with asking for a "few more details" about the Argentaurum process and the apparatus that Emmens was using, Sir William also asked for samples of the gold Emmens was supposedly creating so he could conduct his own scientific tests. After considerable stonewalling, Crookes than proposed visiting Emmens' factory and examining the entire operation in detail - and without any restrictions over what he might be allowed to see.
This finally stirred Emmens to send a reply in October, 1897 which assured Crookes that there would be no point of his visiting. He added that the "scientific world would not believe" in what Crookes found, even if he reported what he saw firsthand. Though Sir William finally got the gold samples he asked for, the results were less than earthshattering since the samples turned out to be completely identical to ordinary gold with no sign of whatever transmutation process Emmens supposedly used. Still, the scientist then promised to begin his own experiments using Emmens' process to see what might be found.
This led to what Emmens would later describe as a "historical letter" from Crookes in which the eminent scientist shared in-depth details of what he found when he tried transforming silver into gold following the procedure outlined by Emmens. Crookes himself was convinced that the experiment was a failure since there was only tiny discrepancy between the treated and untreated gold samples used and even went to far as to ask Emmens to spot where he had made an error.
But as far Emmens was concerned, there was no error. In his reply letter, dated March 7, 1898, he told Crookes that "I very heartily congratulate you on the success recorded in your letter of February 22nd...You have obtained 75 parts of gold for every 62 parts you commenced with. This can't be explained away." But he also added that Crookes' experiment "was so incomplete from my point of view that I feel quite surprised at its degree of success."
More to the point, Emmens then announced to newspaper reports that the eminent Sir William Crookes had succeeded in partially verifying his Argentaurum process. Hearing about this, Crookes then repeated the experiment carefully, this time using Mexican peso coins with a measurable silver content. After determining that there was absolutely no gold to be found in the treated coins, he promptly sent his results to Emmens in another letter adding that "As my name has been so freely used in the newspapers of this country in connection with 'Argentaurum', I feel it will be my duty to communicate these results to the Press. I will, however, wait until there is time to hear what you have to say about the experiment."
Emmens then wrote back on March 31, 1898 and criticized the second experiment which he insisted was "defective in many particulars." He insisted that Crookes had used abnormal Mexican pesos rather than the normal ones that he used in the first experiment. By this time, Crookes had enough of Stephen Emmens and the high-handed way that he was dismissing what was a very carefully constructed test of Emmens' own process. He added that "I am surprised and annoyed to see that you have published in the Spokane Miner a letter of mine which I especially marked "Private" and have used it to try to make the public believe that I have succeeded in transforming silver into gold. When I last week wrote to you I was not aware of this gross breach of all the laws of courtesy and etiquette which govern correspondence between gentlemen all over the civilized world. After such an occurrence, I cannot continue a correspondence with you."
While Emmens wrote back to protest his innocence as well as downplaying the seriousness of Crookes' allegations, he never received a reply, then or ever. Not only did this mark the end of his correspondence with Crookes, it also meant the end of any serious attempt at validating Emmens's claims. The newspapers, which had previously treated Emmens with cautious respect, suddenly realized that Emmens wasn't quite the scientific marvel he had appeared to be.
On Sunday, February 26, 1899, the New York Herald ran a feature story on Emmens which verified that he had sold nearly 700 ounces of "Argentaurum gold" to the U.S. Treasury in 1899 alone. All of the gold had been carefully assayed and found to be almost completely pure. Suspecting fraud, the Herald then challenged Emmens to release the full details of his Argentaurum process so that an impartial panel of scientists could replicate his findings.
Emmens, for his part, replied in a letter to the Herald that he was perfectly willing to accept the challenge, but with one or two conditions of his own. Among other things, he insisted that the only fair test would be to "duplicate my plant elsewhere. I do not believe this could be done under a minimum cost of $10,000." He also offered to have the panel of scientists come into his plant and do their investigating on site. But, as he pointed out, "these gentlemen would probably do $15,000 worth of damage before they were ready to begin work. That I should, of course, expect to be paid for."
Naturally enough, the Herald withdraw its challenge and, well, that was pretty much it for Stephen Emmens. Despite promising to demonstrate his process at the 1900 World's Fair, this never materialized and he simply dropped out of public sight. While one newspaper account suggests that Emmenns died not long afterward, I haven't been able to find any official obituary. As for his mysterious Argentaurum process, that seems to have died with him though the gold he had sold to the U.S. Treasury was real enough.
As for where it came from originally, that pretty much depends on which of several explanations you happen to accept. One explanation advanced in the early 1900s was that the "silver" Mexican pesos that Emmens used already contained some gold which his Argentaurum process then extracted. Another explanation came from a report by one of the analysts at the U.S. Mint which found that Argentaurum gold contained impurities of a kind "commonly present in old jewelry." Though either explanation may well be the correct one, the question of where the gold Emmens sold to the U.S. Treasury came from has never been answered.
So what can we say about "Doctor" Stephen Emmens? Certainly he can be described as flamboyant and paranoid, buy he also had a knack for alienating just about every prominent scientist with whom he ever came in contact. He was also blatantly dishonest in the way he misused scientific findings to promote his Argentaurum process and draw in potential investors. Still, despite coming across as a flim-flam man, Emmens also seemed genuinely bitter over never receiving the scientific acclaim he felt he deserved. Though other would-be alchemists kept the dream of creating gold alive, at least temporarily, none of them ever achieved the kind of fame that Emmens had.
Ir0nically enough, Stephen Emmens dream of creating gold was actually achieved in 1980, sort of. Using a high-powered particle accelerator, researchers at the University of California's Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory managed to transmute bismuth into gold, at least at the atomic level. Granted, they only produced about one-billionth of a cent worth at a relative cost of $10,000, but it was the thought that counted.
Credit-
Stephen H. Emmens and the transmutation of silver into gold, George B. Kaufmann, Endeavour, Volume 7, Issue 3, 1983, Pages 150-154. https://doi.org/10.1016/0160-9327(83)90009-11983
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