Tan, cinnabar, as drug of longevity prior to alchemy.

Alchemy as the art of gold making never existing and had no beginning. It arose as the cult of longevity using simples, like gold and cinnabar, as drugs of longevity. It became alchemy on making the first synthetic drug, Chin-Yeh, Gold-plus-herbal juice, and reached its ideal with Chin-Tan, Gold-plus-cinnabar. The former was red colloidal gold, the latter vermilion with traces of gold. As inscribed character Tan shows crude cinnabar, pulverized, lavagated and filtered on a rectangular piece of cloth.