The earliest known description of zinc as a metal is found in the
treatise on minerals by Paracelsus, and it is he who first designates
the metal by the name familiar to us. Paracelsus says:
“There is another metal, zinc, which is in general unknown. It is
a distinct metal of a different origin, though adulterated with
many other metals. It can be melted, for it consists of three fluid
principles, but it is not malleable. In its colour it is unlike all
others, and does not grow in the same manner; but with its _ultima
materia_ I am as yet unacquainted, for it is almost as strange in its
properties as argentum vivum.”
The alloy of zinc with copper which we call brass was known and much
prized by the Roman metal workers, and they also knew the zinc earth,
calamine, and used this in the production of brass. Who first separated
the metal from the earth is unknown; so too is the original inventor
of white vitriol (sulphate of zinc). Beckmann quotes authorities who
ascribe this to Julius, Duke of Brunswick, about 1570. Beckmann says
white vitriol was at first known as erzalaum, brass-alum, and later
as gallitzenstein, a name which he thinks may have been derived from
galls, as the vitriol and galls were for a long time the principal
articles used for making ink and for dyeing. Green vitriol, he adds,
was called green gallitzenstein. The true nature of several vitriols
was not understood until 1728, when Geoffrey studied and explained them.
The ideas entertained of zinc by the chemists who studied it were
curious. Albertus Magnus held that it was a compound with iron;
Paracelsus leaned to the idea that it was copper in an altered form;
Kunckel fancied it was congealed mercury; Schluttn thought it was tin
rendered fragile by combination with some sulphur; Lemery supposed
it was a form of bismuth; Stahl held that brass was a combination of
copper with an earth and phlogiston; Libavius (1597) described zinc as
a peculiar kind of tin. The metal he examined came from India.
The white oxide of zinc was originally known as pompholyx, which
is Greek for a bubble or blister, nihil album, lana philosophica,
and flores zinci. The unguentum diapompholygos, which was found in
the pharmacopœias of the eighteenth century, and was a legacy from
Myrepsus, was a compound of white lead and oxide of zinc in an ointment
which contained also the juice of nightshade berries and frankincense.
It was deemed to be a valuable application for malignant ulcers.
Oxide of zinc as an internal medicine was introduced by Gaubius,
who was Professor of Medicine at Amsterdam about the middle of the
eighteenth century. It had been known and used under the name of
flowers of zinc from Glauber’s time. A shoemaker at Amsterdam, named
Ludemann, sold a medicine for epilepsy which he called Luna fixata, for
which he acquired some fame. Gaubius was interested in it and analysed
it. He found it to be simply oxide of zinc, and though he did not
endorse the particular medical claim put forward on its behalf he found
it useful for spasms and to promote digestion.