and mysterious nature in .ill he did, Found this 

 luminous mattei while searching for something else 

 Ilr u.is a glassmaker by profession, bul he had 

 abandoned ii in order to be free for t In- pui 

 the philosophical stone with which he wa 

 Having put it into his mind that the secrel of the 

 philosophical stone consisted in the preparation of 

 urine, this man worked in .ill kinds ol manners and 

 for .1 \it\ long time without finding anything. Final- 

 ly, in the year 1669, aftei .1 strong distillation ol urine, 

 he found in the recipient a luminant matter thai has 

 since been called phosphorus. He showed ii to some 

 11! his friends, among them Mister Kunkel [sic]." ' 



Neither the name nor the phenomenon were reallv 

 new. Organic phosphorescenl materials were known 

 to Aristotle, and a lithophosphorus was the subject of 

 a hook published in 1640, based on a discover) made 



l>\ a shoemaker. Yicenzo Casciarolo. on .1 mountain- 

 side '<••" Bologna in I630. s Was the substance new 

 which Brand showed to his friends? Johann Gottfried 

 Leonhardi quotes a book of 1689 in which the author. 

 Klctw ich, claims that this phosphorus had ahead) 

 been know n to I ei nelius. the court ph\ sician of King 



Henri II ol I iai.ee i I Ml I I89). a To the same 



period belongs the "( >idiuntio Alchid Bechil S.uaciaii 

 philosophi," in which Ferdinand Hoefer found a 

 distillation of urine with clay and carbonaceous ma- 

 ni ul described, mid the resulting product named 

 eseai liuncle.' It would he worth looking for this 

 souk e ; although Bechil would still remain an entirely 

 unsuccessful predecessor, it does seem strange that in 

 all the distillations of arbitrary mixtures, the condi- 

 tions should never before 1669 have been right for the 

 formation ami the observation of phosphorus. 



For Brand's contemporaries at least, the discover) 

 was new and exciting. The philosopher Gottfried 

 Wilhelm von Leibniz ( 1646 1 716) considered it impor- 

 tant enough to devote sonic of his time (between his 

 woik as librarian in Hanover and Wolfenbiittel, his 

 efforts to reunite the Protestant and the Catholic 

 churches, and his duties as 1'iiw Counccllor in what 



■ Wilhelm Homberg, Mfmoires Acadin 

 1730), vol. 10, under date of April SO, 1692, pp. ".7 61. 



lot; i liis. Lithiophosphorus sioe de /..' 



(Venice, 1640 



i ited in Peter Joseph M H ich, 2nd 



ed. Leipzig: Weidmann, 1789), vol. \, p. 508, footnoti 

 "Kletwich (de phosph. liqu. et solid. 1689, Thes. II 1 ." 



1 Ferdinand Hoefer, Hist ■ .< Paris, 1843), vol. 



1. p. I 19. 



Figure i. I in ilchemisi discovers phosphorus. \ 

 painting l>\ Joseph Wrighi i >- u _I 779) °' Derby, 

 England. 



we would call a Department of Justice) to a histor) of 



phosphorus. This friend ol Huygens and Boyli 



to prove that Kunckel was not justified in claiming the 



discovery for himself."' Since then, it has been shown 

 that Johann Kunckel (1630 1703) actually worked 

 out the method which neither Brand nor his friend 

 Kraft wanted to disclose. Bo\ le also developed a 

 method independently, published it. and instructed 



5 G. YV. vi in I i ii m/. Wen oirt I Ata iemi P 

 Akademiedti Wissenschqften, Miscellanea Berolincnsia (Berlin, 171m, 

 vol 1, p. 91. 



I'U'IR in: HISTORY Ol'' 1'HOSI'Ht IRIS 



79 



