Hello dear Hiveans, first of all I would like to welcome you all to my new contribution and hope you had a day that has brought numerous experiences into your life! In this post, I would like to talk a little about minerals and hope you are able to expand your knowledge.
You can see here two different specimens of Scorodite and the name originally comes from the Greek and is derived from the word Skorodion for garlic and refers to the property that when it comes into contact with fire, a smell arises that is somewhat reminiscent of garlic. This property is due to the fact that it is an arsenic mineral and other minerals with arsenic as a component also have this property and the mineral was named in the 19th century by August Breithaupt (1791 - 1873). Scorodite is available in different colors and I can hopefully express this variety of colors well with these two specimens and in addition to black and white specimens there are also blue, green, yellow or brown ones and due to the influence of light it can even change the color. It is probably also interesting that it is assumed that it could be one of the minerals that is able to heal fractures itself and in the past I have already written an article on this interesting topic and if you want to expand your knowledge, you will find my contribution here. Arsenic is counted among the semi-metals from a scientific point of view and it has metallic as well as non metallic properties in structure and the use can already be traced back thousands of years and already in ancient Greece a lot was devoted to research and it was described by some scholars such as Democritus and others. Scorodite is not of relevance from an economic point of view due to the rarity and in the past it was probably still used as ore for the extraction of arsenic which is used for various purposes and it often comes in the production of glass, pesticides and in the past it was even used for the production of various medicines and also the alchemist Paracelsus reported about it, but it is important to know here that it has only been used in small doses due to the toxicity.
Arsenic was interesting among the alchemists and there are old traces that it was used at the time for the coloring of metals and according to some old traditions, some scholars also managed to produce gold artificially from it and as a pigment it was also relevant for the production of paints and still popular with artists for a long time until it was replaced more and more. The alchemists probably also used it to whiten copper and it was interesting for the research of artificially produced silver. In the Middle Ages, arsenic became more and more researched and, as mentioned above, people began to use it more as a medicine and it was found out that in small doses it can have a positive effect on numerous diseases and it was still used as a medicine for a very long time, but there is always to mention here that it is highly toxic and was only medically relevant in the right dosage in the case of illness, you should always be your doctor or pharmacist after the right medicine! It was probably already researched in ancient times because of the toxic properties and there are even suspicions that the French emperor Napoleon Bonaparte (1769 - 1821) also died from the consequences of Arsenic compounds, which were often used as a building material at the time. Due to the toxicity, you have to be careful when handling the mineral and after contact you should wash your fingers thoroughly and not bring it to sensitive areas such as the eyes and collectors should store it in closed containers.
Thank you very much for stopping by and I hope you could learn something new about this interesting topic! I captured these pictures with my Camera Sony Alpha 6000 plus 55-210 mm lens!