remarkable for its easy combustibility, and its disagreeable smell when burning, was known in the very earliest ages. Pliny describes four kinds of sulphur, differing from each other, probably, merely in their purity. These were 1. Sulphur vivum, or apyron. It was dug out of the earth solid, and was doubtless pure, or nearly so. It alone was used in medicine. 2. Gleba—used only by fullers. 3. Egula—used also by fullers. Pliny says, it renders woollen stuffs white and soft. It is obvious from this, that the ancients knew the method of bleaching flannel by the fumes of sulphur, as practised by the moderns. 4. The fourth kind was used only for sulphuring matches.
Sulphur, in Pliny’s time, was found native in the Æolian islands, and in Campania. It is curious that he never mentions Sicily, whence the great supply is drawn for modern manufacture.
In medicine, it seems to have been only used externally by the ancients. It was considered as excellent for removing eruptions. It was used also for fumigating.
The word alumen, which we translate alum, occurs often in Pliny; and is the same substance which the Greeks distinguished by the name of στυπτηρια (stypteria). It is described pretty minutely by Dioscorides, and also by Pliny. It was obviously a natural production, dug out of the earth, and consequently quite different from our alum, with which the ancients were unacquainted. Dioscorides says that it was found abundantly in Egypt; that it was of various kinds, but that the slaty variety was the best. He mentions also many other localities. He says that, for medical purposes, the most valued of all the varieties of alumen were the slaty, the round, and the liquid. The slaty alumen is very white, has an exceedingly astringent taste, a strong smell, is free from stony concretions, and gradually cracks and emits long capillary crystals from these rifts; on which account it is sometimes called trichites. This description obviously applies to a kind of slate-clay, which probably contained pyrites mixed with it of the decomposing kind. The capillary crystals were probably similar to those crystals at present called hair-salt by mineralogists, which exude pretty abundantly from the shale of the coal-beds, when it has been long exposed to the air. Hair-salt differs very much in its nature. Klaproth ascertained by analysis, that the hair-salt from the quicksilver-mines in Idria is sulphate of magnesia, mixed with a small quantity of sulphate of iron.96 The hair-salt from the abandoned coal-pits in the neighbourhood of Glasgow is a double salt, composed of sulphate of alumina, and sulphate of iron, in definite proportions; the composition being 1 atom protosulphate of iron, 1½ atom sulphate of alumina, 15 atoms water.
I suspect strongly that the capillary crystals from the schistose alumen of Dioscorides were nearly of the same nature.
From Pliny’s account of the uses to which alumen was applied, it is quite obvious that it must have varied very much in its nature. Alumen nigrum was used to strike a black colour, and must therefore have contained iron. It was doubtless an impure native sulphate of iron, similar to many native productions of the same nature still met with in various parts of the world, but not employed; their use having been superseded by various artificial salts, more definite in their nature, and consequently more certain in their application, and at the same time cheaper and more abundant than the native.
The alumen employed as a mordant by the dyers, must have been a sulphate of alumina more or less pure; at least it must have been free from all sulphate of iron, which would have affected the colour of the cloth, and prevented the dyer from accomplishing his object.97
What the alumen rotundum was, is not easily conjectured. Dioscorides says, that it was sometimes made artificially; but that the artificial alumen rotundum was not much valued. The best, he says, was full of air-bubbles, nearly white, and of a very astringent taste. It had a slaty appearance, and was found in Egypt or the Island of Melos.
The liquid alumen was limpid, milky, of an equal colour, free from hard concretions, and having a fiery shade of colour.98 In its nature, it was similar to the alumen candidum; it must therefore have consisted chiefly, at least, of sulphate of alumina.
Bitumen and naphtha were known to the ancients, and used by them to give light instead of oil; they were employed also as external applications in cases of disease, and were considered as having the same virtues as sulphur. It is said, that the word translated salt in the New Testament—“Ye are the salt of the earth: but if the salt have lost his savour, wherewith shall it be salted? It is henceforth good for nothing, but to be cast out, and to be trodden under foot of men”99—it is said, that the word salt in this passage refers to asphalt, or bitumen, which was used by the Jews in their sacrifices, and called salt by them. But I have not been able to find satisfactory evidence of the truth of this opinion. It is obvious from the context, that the word translated salt could not have had that meaning among the Jews; because salt never can be supposed to lose its savour. Bitumen, while liquid, has a strong taste and smell, which it loses gradually by exposure to the air, as it approaches more and more to a solid form.
Asphalt was one of the great constituents of the Greek fire. A great bed of it still existing in Albania, supplied the Greeks with this substance. Concerning the nature of the Greek fire, it is clear that many exaggerated and even fabulous statements have been published. The obvious intention of the Greeks being, probably, to make their invention as much dreaded as possible by their enemies. Nitre was undoubtedly one of the most important of its constituents; though no allusion whatever is ever made. We do not know when nitrate of potash, the nitre of the moderns, became known in Europe. It was discovered in the east; and was undoubtedly known in China and India before the commencement of the Christian era. The property of nitre, as a supporter of combustion, could not have remained long unknown after the discovery of the salt. The first person who threw a piece of it upon a red-hot coal would observe it. Accordingly we find that its use in fireworks was known very early in China and India; though its prodigious expansive power, by which it propels bullets with so great and destructive velocity, is a European invention, posterior to the time of Roger Bacon.
The word nitre (רתנ) had been applied by the ancients to carbonate of soda, a production of Egypt, where it is still formed from sea-water, by some unknown process of nature in the marshes near Alexandria. This is evident, not merely from the account given of it by Dioscorides and Pliny; for the following passage, from the Old Testament, shows that it had the same meaning among the Jews: “As he that taketh away a garment in cold weather, is as vinegar upon nitre: so is he that singeth songs to a heavy heart.”100 Vinegar poured upon saltpetre produces no sensible effect whatever, but when poured upon carbonate of soda, it occasions an effervescence. When saltpetre came to be imported to Europe, it was natural to give it the same name as that applied to carbonate of soda, to which both in taste and appearance it bore some faint resemblance. Saltpetre possessing much more striking properties than carbonate of soda much more attention was drawn to it, and it gradually fixed upon itself the term nitre, at first applied to a different salt. When this change of nomenclature took place does not appear; but it was completed before the time of Roger Bacon, who always applies the term nitrum to our nitrate of potash and never to carbonate of soda.
In the preceding history of the chemical facts known to the ancients, I have taken no notice of a well-known story related of Cleopatra. This magnificent and profligate queen boasted to Antony that she would herself consume a million of sistertii at a supper. Antony smiled at the proposal, and doubted the possibility of her performing it. Next evening a magnificent entertainment was provided, at which Antony, as usual, was present, and expressed his opinion that the cost of the feast, magnificent as it was, fell far short of the sum specified by the queen. She requested him to defer computing till the dessert was finished. A vessel filled with vinegar was placed before her, in which she threw two pearls, the finest in the world, and which were valued at ten millions of sistertii; these pearls were dissolved by the vinegar,101 and the liquid was immediately drunk by the queen. Thus she made good her boast, and destroyed the two finest pearls in the world.102 This story, supposing it true, shows that Cleopatra was aware that vinegar has the property of dissolving pearls. But not that she knew the
