referred to experiments, and the most coveted ones were not those which were bizarre, but the ones which had been proven to yield the desired outcome. Some women known for their interest in alchemy were Catherine de' Medici, the Queen of France, and Marie de' Medici, the following Queen of France, who carried out experiments in her personal laboratory. Also, Isabella d'Este, the Marchioness of Mantua, made perfumes herself to serve as gifts. In this period, the only book of secrets ascribed to a woman was ('The Secrets of Signora Isabella Cortese'). This book contained information on how to turn base metals into gold, medicine, and cosmetics. However, it is rumored that a man, Girolamo Ruscelli, was the real author and only used a female voice to attract female readers. This contributed to a bigger problem in which male authors would credit prominent noblewomen for beauty products with the purpose of appealing to a female audience. For example, in ("Gallant Recipe-Book"), the distillation of lemons and roses was attributed to Elisabetta Gonzaga, the duchess of Urbino. In the same book, Isabella d'Aragona, the daughter of Alfonso II of Naples, is accredited for recipes involving alum and mercury. Ippolita Maria Sforza is even referred to in an anonymous manuscript about a hand lotion created with rose powder and crushed bones. Mary Anne Atwood's A Suggestive Inquiry into the Hermetic Mystery (1850) marks the return of women during the nineteenth-century occult revival. Modern historical research The history of alchemy has become a significant and recognized subject of academic study. As the language of the alchemists is analyzed, historians are becoming more aware of the intellectual connections between that discipline and other facets of Western cultural history, such as the evolution of science and philosophy, the sociology and psychology of the intellectual communities, kabbalism, spiritualism, Rosicrucianism, and other mystic movements. Institutions involved in this research include The Chymistry of Isaac Newton project at Indiana University, the University of Exeter Centre for the Study of Esotericism (EXESESO), the European Society for the Study of Western Esotericism (ESSWE), and the University of Amsterdam's Sub-department for the History of Hermetic Philosophy and Related Currents. A large collection of books on alchemy is kept in the Bibliotheca Philosophica Hermetica in Amsterdam. A recipe found in a mid-19th-century kabbalah based book features step by step instructions on turning copper into gold. The author attributed this recipe to an