The Elixir of Immortality
Chinese elixir recipes calling for cinnabar and other compounds of mercury, lead and arsenic are documented, and several emperors, at least five of them of the Tang dynasty, are recorded as having died from elixir poisoning, a rare case where the pursuit of immortality left an attested body count in the historical record.
Ge Hong, Baopuzi (c. 320 CE), for the recipes; Joseph Needham & Lu Gwei-djen, Science and Civilisation in China, vol. 5, pt. 2 (1974), and Ho Peng Yoke, Li, Qi and Shu (Dover edn, 2000), p. 184, on elixir poisoning
The recurring alchemical dream, pursued independently in China, India and the Islamic world, of a substance granting eternal life.