-Guys!
Come here!
Did you see it, the trailer
for the new film
"Fantastic Beasts:
The Crimes of Grindelwald"?
I was so excited when I saw
that Nicolas Flamel
makes an appearance.
-Nicolas Flamel.
-Jacob Kowalski.
-Oh!
-Oh.
You don't look a day over 375.
-Now in case you don't remember,
in the Harry Potter books,
Flamel was an alchemist,
a person who tries to make
the Sorcerer's Stone
or Philosopher's Stone.
The stone can turn base metals
like lead into gold
and also produce
the elixir of life.
And according to the first
Harry Potter book,
Flamel was the only alchemist
ever to succeed in this quest.
But here's the thing --
Nicolas Flamel was a real guy.
He was a bookseller, notary,
and philanthropist
in 14th-century Paris.
Now, whether or not he actually
made
the Philosopher's Stone
is up for debate,
but here is the myth
behind the man.
Legend has it that Flamel
acquired a strange book
with a brass cover filled with
symbols he couldn't understand,
so he set off
on a quest to decode it.
In Spain, he found a scholar
who helped him
translate the manuscript.
The scholar died before
finishing the translation,
but Flamel
apparently learned enough
to decode the rest himself.
The manuscript was known as
"The Book of Abraham the Jew,"
and it was written to help
the Jewish people pay tribute
to the Romans by turning
base metals into gold.
So with the book translated,
Flamel and his wife, Perenelle,
made gold for themselves.
Flamel then hid the secrets
he learned from the book
in public art.
He encoded the knowledge
in pictures
that decorated
a church building.
For example, he painted
two entwined dragons --
one that represented sulfur,
and the other mercury,
which formed part
of the formula
he used to create
the Philosopher's Stone.
So, that was the legend,
but there are real books
published in Nicolas
Flamel's name that tell his
account of creating the stone.
Recently, I had the great
pleasure of seeing some of them,
along with many other volumes
that could easily be found
on Dumbledore's bookshelf.
Whoa!
Steve, is this the library
at Hogwarts?
-No, actually, this is
the History of Medicine division
at the National Library of
Medicine in Bethesda, Maryland.
-Steve Greenberg is the Head
of Rare Books
and Early Manuscripts
here at the library.
Which house in Hogwarts
are you in?
-I think I'd be a Ravenclaw.
-I mean, they are very studious.
-That's right, though I do
have my Slytherin days.
-[laughs] Slytherin or not,
I was excited to meet Steve
since the library has two books
that allegedly
contain the alchemical writings
of Nicolas Flamel.
-This one is the older one.
It's from 1612,
and it's in French.
And it talks about
three treatices
and how to convert elements
to other elements.
And you can see one of them
is written by Nicolas Flamel.
And since this was kind of not
knowledge to be shared easily,
sometimes the books get to be
an awful lot smaller.
-Why was this information
so secret?
-Well, it's kind of magic,
'cause you are
transforming things.
And magic was a little sketchy.
You didn't want everyone to know
the secrets.
Besides, if there was
too much gold,
it wouldn't be worth
as much anymore.
-[chuckles] Right, right.
You have to account
for inflation.
-Exactly.
-Now, you might be wondering why
a medical library has books
on alchemy and magic at all.
-Chemistry, really, and alchemy
are almost the same thing,
and alchemy is just chemistry
that doesn't work.
And when you go back far enough,
you find that chemistry
and alchemy
get mixed up together.
-Is there anything that
the alchemists discovered
or learned that actually
is applied in science today?
-A great deal.
They were very good at studying
the individual
properties of elements
and the fact that if you mixed
two things together,
they would react in the same way
every time,
there was a consistency.
-Flamel isn't the only
Harry Potter figure
to make an appearance
at the library.
This unfinished book
is by Paracelsus,
the discoverer of Parseltongue,
who was also a real
pharmacologist and alchemist.
-Did we mention that he actually
got killed in a bar fight?
-No!
[laughs] -Apparently so.
-The library has many
other books
that blur the lines
between science and magic,
like this one from 1485.
-I can't believe I just got
to touch that.
-Well, this is a book
for what you at Hogwarts
would call an herbologist,
but this is certainly
for a botanist,
though they wouldn't
have used that word.
It's telling you what the plants
are good for, how to grow them,
and how to make sure
you have more next year.
And there are some real plants
in here,
and there are some plants
that we're not quite sure
what they were.
-Herbology definitely
would have been
my favorite class at Hogwarts.
Hufflepuff for life!
In the library at Hogwarts,
there are books that
are considered dangerous,
like "The Monster Book
of Monsters,"
which, you know,
could actually bite your hand
if you're not careful.
I'm assuming you don't have
any books that are dangerous
to our physical beings
here at the library,
but do you have books here
that were maybe
ever considered dangerous
from a moral perspective
or spiritual perspective?
-We do have one.
So, this is a book from 1494.
It's called "The Malleus
Maleficarum,"
"The Hammer of Witches,"
and officially,
it's a book to help you
determine if someone is a witch.
But it also has a lot
of information
that only witches would know
so that you knew
how to find them.
So if you were found with
a copy of this book,
you'd have
some explaining to do.
-"The Hammer of Witches"
could totally be a text book
in Professor Flitwick's class.
In fact, the National Library
of Medicine has books
that could have been used
in any Hogwarts class,
from Potions to Care
of Magical Creatures.
Do you think that books
are magical?
-I do because you always learn
something unexpected
from a good book.
-Getting to hang out with Steve
and see the collection
at the National Library
of Medicine
got me thinking
about the differences
between science and magic.
A woman boiling willow bark
to cure headaches in the 1500s
would have been called a witch,
but today, we'd call her
a doctor or a chemist.
Willow bark contains
similar pain
relieving compounds as aspirin.
And while modern doctors
and engineers
may not have created
the Philosopher's Stone,
they have developed innovations
that vastly
improved the length
and quality of our lives.
And I have to think that
to Nicolas Flamel,
modern science
might seem like magic.
-[singing] Science magic show,
science magic show,
science magic show.
Science magic show,
science magic show,
science magic show.
-Hooray!
