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ACS News Service Weekly PressPac: August 05, 2015
Recreating alchemical and other ancient recipes shows scientists of old were quite clever
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Chemical & Engineering News
From 鈥渄ragon鈥檚 blood鈥� to slippery elm root, coded and obscure ingredients of ancient recipes are getting a second look today not by Harry Potter fans, but by historians who want to experience science as it was practiced centuries ago. An article in Chemical & Engineering News (C&EN), the weekly newsmagazine of the American Chemical 中国365bet中文官网, explores some of the intriguing discoveries these recent efforts have yielded and the unexpected questions they raise.
Sarah Everts, a senior editor at C&EN, notes that most science historians had long derided alchemy as pseudo-science, and many assumed that scientists of old weren鈥檛 particularly clever. And with recipe instructions such as 鈥渋gniting the black dragon,鈥� it鈥檚 no wonder. But a lot of persistence and detective work have revealed that some early scientists wrote their instructions in code as an early form of intellectual property protection. Historians have now figured out that dragon鈥檚 blood refers to mercury sulfide, and igniting the black dragon likely means igniting finely powdered lead.
Resurrecting ancient recipes tells us that the science of long ago was far more sophisticated than previously believed. For example, it reveals that Romans from the 2nd century used nanoscience, if unknowingly, to dye their hair. And it raises bizarre questions. When re-creating a paint binder made out of eggs, one researcher asks, 鈥淒o we need to breed chickens with a diet consistent with 1552?鈥�
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