Kitabı oku: «A History of Inventions, Discoveries, and Origins, Volume II (of 2)», sayfa 8

As what has been said contains nothing that can enable us to determine the genus of the struthium according to the rules of botany, we may be allowed to conjecture that it was one of those plants still used for the like purpose in Italy and other neighbouring countries. Fuchs thinks it must have been the Saponaria officinalis (soap-wort), the roots of which indeed contain a saponaceous juice that readily changes the saliva into froth. The root was employed for that purpose by the impostor in Lucian; and the juice is used at present for cleaning wool and cloth. In the Helvetian Alps, the sheep, before they are shorn, are washed with a decoction of the plant and its roots; and with a mixture of ashes it serves for cleaning linen. The taste of it is so sharp, that it is compared by some to that of the small burnet-saxifrage.

This Saponaria officinalis however differs too much from the remaining properties²⁵⁵ of the struthium. Its root is as thick only as a quill, or at most as one’s finger. The stem, which is three feet in height, throws out many branches, and cannot be called caulis ferulaceus, tenuis. It is not rough and prickly, and, instead of growing in poor rocky soil, it is rather fond of deep ground and the borders of corn-fields.

We may therefore conjecture with more probability that the Gypsophila Struthium, Linn.²⁵⁶, a plant still used for washing in the lower part of Italy and Spain, is the struthium of the ancients. This opinion acquires some strength by its being adopted among the Italians and Spaniards; and because the plant, as Pliny says, grows in a rocky soil and on the mountains. It is also still called lanaria by the Calabrian peasants. It has a tender stem; its leaves are so like those of the olive-tree that they might be compared to them by those who are not botanists; and its root is large, but it is neither rough nor prickly. This contradiction may be accounted for by supposing that Pliny, through a mistake, of which I have already accused him, ascribed falsely to the soap-plant the prickly or rough leaves of the dye-plant which had an affinity to madder. But even after this explanation there still remains to be got over a dubious passage of Theophrastus, who indeed seems to make the plant prickly also.

I do not therefore place entire confidence in this opinion; but suspect rather that we shall receive from the East an account of a plant, still used there, which will correspond more exactly with the soap-plant described by Pliny. I am inclined to think that I have already found some precursory information respecting it in Bauhin, who says that in Syria there is another kind of soap-plant, which has prickly leaves like the thistle, and a thick root of a sharp acrid taste. The root, he adds, was employed for washing clothes and wool; and the confectioners of Damascus formed of it, with honey and wine, a kind of sweetmeat which appeared as white as if it had been made of the finest flour and sugar, and which was so hard that it could scarcely be broken with the teeth. This plant seems to belong to those, the cultivation of which was abandoned in Europe, after the use of them was rendered superfluous by newer discoveries.

That the ancients employed their struthium for washing wool is confirmed by various authorities; but I do not remember to have found any evidence of its being used for cleaning clothes which had been worn. Salmasius however quotes a passage from the works, unfortunately never printed, of the old chemist Zosimus, in which he gives directions for restoring, by means of the soap-plant, the lustre of pearls which have become yellow²⁵⁷.

The meal of many kinds of seeds may be used for washing, as well as various kinds of bran. That of almonds, which on account of its oil is remarkably soft, is employed at present for washing the hands by those who are desirous of having a white delicate skin. Cloth, the colours of which easily fade, and which will neither endure soap nor hard rubbing, may be washed extremely well with bran. Our fullers, therefore, and stocking manufacturers use oat-, barley- and bean-meal, especially when they wish the cloth to be slowly milled. Whether the ancients employed bran in the same manner I have not had an opportunity of examining. I am rather inclined to think that they did; and there is a passage of Galen which seems to allude to the use of bean-meal²⁵⁸. In all probability the beans of the ancients were the smallest and roundest variety of our horse-beans, or those used as fodder.

In the last place, the ancients, at those periods of which I speak, used fullers-earth much oftener than it is used at present. Till the countries where it was procured be described by travellers who unite a knowledge of antiquities with skill in mineralogy, the species of this earth, mentioned in the works of ancient authors, cannot be distinguished with accuracy. But from the purposes to which they were applied, we can with certainty conclude that they must have been partly of the nature of marl and partly of the nature of soapstone.

According to the then usual method of washing, by which the clothes were stamped with the feet, the cretæ fulloniæ, as Pliny²⁵⁹ calls them, acted in the same manner as our fullers-earth employed at present, partly by scouring and partly by absorbing the greasy dirt. The ancients, after their manner, gave them names only from the countries where they were produced; and hence we find mention made of terra Cimolia²⁶⁰, Chia²⁶¹, Lemnia²⁶², Sarda²⁶³, Umbria²⁶⁴, Samia, Tymphæa²⁶⁵, and others. Many of them, like that brought from Sardinia, could not be used in cleaning coloured stuffs; and for this reason, perhaps, because some colours would not stand hard scouring, or endure their caustic nature.

The fullers, however, did not use these earths merely for washing, but also for whitening many kinds of cloth. This was done by rubbing fine white earth into the cloth, in the same manner as soldiers do to give some parts of their dress a brighter appearance. A like process is employed by glovers and those who wash or clean leather. The earth used by the latter is a yellowish-white iron-ochre, called from the purpose to which it is applied collar-earth²⁶⁶. When a perfect white was required, a kind of white potters-clay or marl was employed; and the closer it adhered to the cloth, and the less easily it could be rubbed out, it was so much the better. The poor at Rome rubbed it over their clothes on festivals, in order that they might appear brighter²⁶⁷.

It deserves here to be particularly remarked, that some of these earths, such as that of Chios, were employed in the baths instead of nitrum; and this is the case in the Levant still. De la Valle extols in this respect a kind of reddish earth, and says that people of the first distinction never bathe without it. Perfumes are often mixed with it; and it is formed into small balls, which when used are suffered to dissolve in the water. Different kinds of vessels, and particularly those in which wine and oil had been kept, were cleansed with these earths also²⁶⁸. Glass flasks which have had oil in them, cannot be cleansed better or more speedily than by shaking in them a mixture of fullers-earth or potters-clay. When these are not to be had, blotting-paper may be used. The oil is absorbed by the earth or the paper, and with them can be easily washed out.

To render cloth perfectly white, it was also fumigated with sulphur by the fullers, who were not ignorant that many colours were destroyed by its vapours²⁶⁹. We are told by Apuleius that the wife of a scourer concealed her gallant under a vessel of basket-work, over which cloth used to be laid to whiten by the effects of sulphur kindled under it. Our washer-women employ a cask in this mode of bleaching, and our clothiers a small close apartment, in which the wet cloth is suspended upon hooks.

Pliny has described the method of washing used at Rome, but many things respecting it appear to me obscure²⁷⁰. The cloth was first washed with Sardian earth; it was then fumigated with sulphur, and afterwards rinsed with real Cimolian earth. The word desquamatur was undoubtedly a term of art, which cannot be further explained, because we are unacquainted with the operation to which it alludes. Pliny seems to have been particular in mentioning real Cimolian earth, because the false kind became black by the steam of the sulphur which the cloth absorbed. Was it adulterated with some metallic oxide or with white lead? It was dear enough to induce people to mix it with such articles; and in that case it must necessarily have become black.

The expression funditur sulphure seems to be attended with no less difficulty. In comparing the different readings, I find that the oldest editions have offunditur, which has been changed into effunditur, and lastly into funditur. It is probable however that instead of offunditur we ought to read offenditur, which would make the whole clear. I am much surprised that this reading was not adopted by Hardouin. As Pliny says in other parts of his work “offendit stomachum,” and “offendit aciem oculorum,” he might undoubtedly have applied that word to the earth and its colour.

Fast colours, which the acid of sulphur might render pale, but could not entirely destroy, would by washing with Cimolian earth be improved or rather restored, as the earth would absorb and carry off the acid. There was also another kind of earth (saxum) which was useful in the preparation of cloth fumigated with sulphur, but which injured the dye, probably because it was too calcareous, and which was perhaps our common chalk.

I do not intend to treat here of the whole art of Roman fullers, which belongs rather to the history of weaving or manufacturing cloth in general; but I hope I shall be forgiven if I add the few following observations. The fullers received the cloth as it came from the loom, in order that it might be scoured, walked and smoothed. It was walked by being stamped upon with the feet. The rough wool raised by this operation was combed off, partly with the skin of a hedgehog, and partly with the tops of some plants of the thistle kind, in order to give the cloth a nap. Shearing seems not then to have been known: I have at least met with no passage where it is mentioned: and the case is the same with the use of presses; which, in my opinion, were not invented till the sixteenth century. The whole process of smoothing seems to have consisted in making the wool or nap lie as evenly as possible one way, which certainly must have given to the cloth a much better appearance.

As cloth at present is more dressed and shorn on one side than another, the ancient fullers prepared theirs in the like manner; so that clothes could be turned, after the inside of them had been new dressed. Whether they made felt, also, I have not yet inquired; but I conjecture that the manufacturing it was the occupation of those called lanarii, coactores, and coactilarii.

The occupation of the fullers was at Rome very extensive, and afforded employment to a great number of people, but it at length entirely decayed. Schöttgen is of opinion that it belongs to those arts which have been lost. But other writers have declared arts which are exercised now in greater perfection than formerly to be lost, merely because they were not acquainted with them; or because, on account of the alterations they have undergone, they did not know where to find them. All the different operations of fulling have become so complex by new methods, improvements, and inventions, that they can no longer be conducted by one man; and the whole business has for that reason been separated or divided into several distinct branches.

The scouring of cloth when it comes from the loom, was, together with walking, separated from the rest, after the invention of the walk-mill. How old that invention may be, I cannot accurately determine; but we find it mentioned in the beginning of the thirteenth, and even at the end of the tenth century. Such a mill formerly was call fullencium, or molendinum cum fullone²⁷¹. The dressing and smoothing of cloth, since the invention of shearing and pressing, requires so much art, that these operations can be performed only by skilful workmen, who are called cloth-shearers or cloth-dressers. The scouring of cloth dirtied in manufacturing, is by the invention of soap, bleaching, and other processes, become so easy that it can be performed by women. The Romans for the most part wore a white dress made in the form of a cloak; which indeed, as shirts were not then used, must have often stood in need of being cleaned²⁷². We, on the other hand, wear in general short close clothes of coloured cloth; which by the fashion in which they are made, are less exposed to be dirtied; and we are more accustomed also to use clothes of linen or cotton, which can be washed with much less labour. Felt, which is employed almost for hats alone, is manufactured by our hat-makers. Whoever takes a general view of all these employments together, will be readily convinced that they maintain more people, and in a better manner, than the whole ars fullonia did at Rome.

[The principal kinds of soap manufactured in this country are, – white soap, composed chiefly of tallow and soda, but for some purposes of olive oil and soda; yellow soap, made of tallow, rosin and soda, a little palm oil being occasionally added; mottled soap, formed of tallow, kitchen stuff and soda, its peculiar appearance being communicated by dispersing the lees through it towards the end of the operation; brown soap, made from palm oil, rosin and soda. Soft soap is made with potash and drying oils, either alone or mixed with tallow, and other coarse fatty matters. The fatty matter is mixed with the alkaline ley, and the whole boiled gently for some time, until the fat is completely saponified, which may be known by its becoming clear and transparent, and its susceptibility of being drawn into long threads. A quantity of common salt is then added to the boiling mixture, until the soap loses its thready character, and drops from the spatula in short thick lumps. The soap is then removed, either after cooling, or at once ladled out. Common fatty matters, as tallow, fat-oils, &c., are compounds of a fatty acid with a base, thus resembling salts; the base is a peculiar sweet principle, glycerine; by ebullition with the caustic lye, the neutral fatty compound is decomposed, the fatty acid combining with the base soda, and forming the soap, whilst the glycerine with the excess of alkali remains in the liquid.

The so-called silicated soap, of which large quantities are now manufactured, is made by combining silicate of soda with hard soap in the hot and pasty state; in this way from 10 to 30 per cent. of the silicate may be introduced. Such soap possesses, according to Dr. Ure, very powerful detergent qualities, but it is apt to feel hard and somewhat gritty in use. The silicated soda is obtained by boiling ground flints in a strong caustic lye. Many substances are used to adulterate soap, such as potatoe-starch, clay, &c., for which improvements, as they are termed, numerous patents have been granted in this country.

In Great Britain the hard kind of soap is chiefly made at Liverpool and London, but in considerable quantities also at Runcorn, Bristol, Brentford, Hull, Bromsgrove, Plymouth and Sethwick, and at Glasgow and Leith in Scotland; the soft soap is made principally at Liverpool, Glasgow and Bradford; and silicated soap is likewise extensively manufactured at Liverpool.

From the excise returns, it appears that 140,712,535 pounds of hard, 9,788,851 pounds of soft, and 3,921,862 pounds of silicated soap were made in England in 1841; and 10,708,464 pounds of hard, and 4,535,030 pounds of soft soap in Scotland; making in all 169,666,742 pounds, which is an increase of about 30 per cent. since 1832²⁷³.

The excise duty on soap was first imposed in Great Britain in 1711, when it was fixed at 1d. per pound. It was raised in 1713 to 1½d. per pound; and again, in 1782, when hard and soft soap were first distinguished, the former being rated at 2¼d., and the latter at 1¾d. per pound. In 1816, that on hard soap was increased to 3d. per pound. But since May 31, 1833, the duty has been 1½d. per pound on hard soap, and 1d. per pound on soft. In 1839, the number of soap manufacturers in England was 177; in Scotland 19; and in Ireland 183. Each requires an annual license, costing 4l.

An allowance of duty is made on soap used in the woollen, silk, flax, and cotton manufactures, which in 1841 was granted on 10,190,160 pounds of hard, and 9,090,184 pounds of soft soap; the allowances amounting to 78,112l. In the same year the net amount yielded by the soap-duty to the public revenue was 815,864l. Ireland is not subject to the soap-duty.

The soap-maker was formerly subjected to an arbitrary and vexatious interference from the excise; but of late years the regulations have been greatly improved, and there is now no superintendence of the process of manufacture, which may be conducted in any way and of any material.]

MADDER

This plant, the root of which is either dried and bruised, or used fresh, for dyeing red, has a weak, square, jointed stem; and rises to the height of eight feet when supported, otherwise it creeps along the ground. At each joint there are from four to six leaves, about three inches in length, almost an inch broad in the middle, and pointed at both ends. The upper side of the leaves is smooth; but the middle nerve of the under side is armed with small rough prickles; and others of the same kind may be found on the stem. On this account, the leaves, which drop annually, adhere readily to other bodies, like those of the asperugo. The branches, which in June bear flowers divided into four yellow leaves, proceed from the joints. The fruit, a kind of berry, which, towards the time of its ripening, though that seldom happens among us, is first of a brownish colour, and then black, contains a round seed. The roots grow sometimes to the thickness of one’s finger, push themselves deep into the earth, are surrounded by many small fibres, have a yellowish-red pith, and are covered with a black bark or rind. This plant grows wild in the Levant, as well as in Italy, the southern parts of France, and in Switzerland. The cultivated kind is well known, and is propagated with much advantage in various countries of Europe.

When one compares this short description with what Dioscorides says of a plant which he calls ereuthodanon, it will be readily seen that he meant our madder. He even compares its long square stem, armed with a great many hooks, to that of the asperugo; and he tells us that the leaves stand in the form of a star around the joints. The fruit was at first green, then red, and lastly black. The thin long roots, adds he, which are red, serve for dyeing; and on that account the cultivated kind (he must therefore have been acquainted with the wild sort) is reared with much benefit in Galilee, around Ravenna in Italy and in Caria, where it is planted either among the olive-trees, or in fields destined for that purpose. It is remarked in some manuscripts, that this plant had a name given it by the Romans, which, as Marcellus Virgil observes, meant the same thing as Rubia sativa, and that it was called in Etruria Lappa minor, doubtless because, like the bur, it adhered to other bodies. On account of the colour which it communicated, it was called also sometimes cinnabaris²⁷⁴.

In opposition to this asserted identity I find only one doubt; namely, that among those plants which, on account of the position of their leaves, were called stellatæ, and which were all so like that we must reduce them to one natural order, there are more sorts, the roots of which dye red, and which on that account are very improperly called wild madder. Why, therefore, should the plant of Dioscorides be our madder, and not some other plant of the like nature? For this reason, in my opinion: because the ancients, who were acquainted with all these plants, which grew wild in their lands, were equally prudent as the moderns, and cultivated that kind only which was the most productive or beneficial, viz. our Rubia tinctorum.

This opinion will be strengthened by comparing the accounts given of that plant by other ancient writers. Theophrastus agrees almost perfectly with Dioscorides; and adds, that it did not grow upright, but was fond of reclining. The comparison, therefore, with the leaves of ivy cannot be just; but that I shall leave to the critics. Pliny says expressly, that the erythrodanum or ereuthodanum was in his mother-tongue called rubia; and that its red roots were used to dye wool and leather red²⁷⁵.

In the middle ages this plant was called varantia, a name which must have arisen from verantia. The latter means the real, genuine dye; as aurantia signified a golden yellow. Till the year 1736, this plant was little regarded, except among dyers, farmers and merchants, who purchased it from the farmers, in order to sell it to the dyers with profit; and among a few herb-dealers and physicians, who, on the authority of the ancients, ascribed to it eminent virtues, which others doubted or altogether denied. In the above year, however, a property of it was discovered by accident, as usual, which rendered it an object of more attention. John Belchier, an English surgeon, having dined with a cotton-printer, observed that the bones of the pork which was brought to the table were red. As he seemed surprised at this circumstance, his host assured him that the redness was occasioned by the swine feeding on the water mixed with bran in which the cotton cloth was boiled, and which was coloured by the madder used in printing it. Belchier²⁷⁶, to whom this effect was new, convinced himself by experiments that the red colour of the bones had arisen from the madder employed in printing the cotton, and from no other cause; and he communicated his discovery to the Royal Society, in a paper which was printed in their Transactions.

This singularity was now soon known to all the naturalists, several of whom made new experiments, the result of which brought to light many truths useful to physiology. Besides the roots of madder, those of the Galium (yellow ladies-bed-straw) and other plants which have an affinity to madder, produce the like effects; but this is the case neither with saffron nor woad, nor with many others much used in dyeing. The colouring takes place soonest in young animals; and is strongest where the bones are hardest and thickest. On the other hand, it does not reach the soft parts; appears only a little in the milk; and in general is not perceptible in the animal juices²⁷⁷.

As the English calico-printers were acquainted with this effect of madder before it was known to naturalists, it is not improbable that it was known much sooner in other places, where the plant has been much cultivated and used since the earliest periods. From what J. E. Stief says, we have reason to believe that the people in the neighbourhood of Breslau, his native city, who gave the stalks of the madder plant to their cows instead of straw, must have first discovered that it possessed the property of communicating a red colour to the bones²⁷⁸.

As many truths not yet investigated by means of new experiments, and which on that account have not yet been acknowledged, are concealed among the evidently false assertions to be found in the works of the ancients, and as these works were thrown aside too early, before their contents were properly examined, I was induced to suspect that some hints of this colouring property might also be mentioned in them, which indeed is the case.

We learn from the works of Galen and Dioscorides, that the ancient physicians remarked that the use of certain roots, which they administered to their patients, communicated a colour to their urine and excrements; and this observation has been repeated by Cardan, Thurneisser, Porta, Castor, Durantes, and others. Had those ancient physicians, who often prescribed these roots, and paid attention to the colour of the excrements of their patients, been accustomed to open their bodies when they died under their hands, they would have perhaps remarked, in human bones, what was observed long after in the bones of animals, when the roots were no longer used in medicine; and what, if I am not mistaken, was never yet observed in the bones of the human species²⁷⁹.

Böhmer, who made researches respecting the antiquity of this observation, found it neither in Rombert. Dodonæus, Mich. Ettmuller, Morin, Will. Salmon, nor others, who, however, speak of coloured urine. In his opinion the oldest writer who speaks of coloured bones is Mizaldus; but what he relates is all taken from the treatise of Lemnius De Miraculis Occultis Naturæ; and the latter therefore is the oldest writer that I at present can mention as acquainted with this property. He was a physician in Zealand, where madder has been cultivated since the earliest ages, and where he had an opportunity of remarking it. He says that the bones of animals became red, as had been observed when the flesh was dressed, by their eating only the leaves, and not the roots. In the first edition of the above work, printed in octavo, in the year 1559, which consists of two books, this information will not be found; but it may be contained in the second of 1564, which comprehends four books.

[The madder plant is much cultivated in Holland, but Macquei observes that the Dutch were first indebted to the Flemish refugees for their knowledge of the method of preparing this plant. Its culture has often been attempted in England, but always without success²⁸⁰. It is also largely cultivated in Alsace and Provence in France, especially near Avignon, in Asiatic Turkey, and in Italy; from which places it is largely exported. The Turkey and Provence madder is procured from Rubia peregrina; the remainder from R. tinctorum. To prepare the root, which is the part used in dyeing, it is removed from the ground, picked, dried and ground.

Madder contains three distinct colouring principles; two of these are red, viz. alizarine and purpurine, and one, xanthine, is yellow.

Since 1836, two new products have been introduced into commerce, which are destined to replace madder in the operations of dyeing and calico-printing; one is called garancine, the other colorine. Garancine is prepared by washing and macerating madder, and filtering through linen. The grounds are then crushed and mixed with sulphuric acid, equal to half the amount of madder first employed; the acid should be somewhat dilute. It is then poured hot upon the madder, agitated, and when the mixture appears intimate, the temperature is raised to 212°, and maintained for about an hour. It is then again mixed with water, filtered, and thoroughly washed. It is finally pressed, dried and passed through the sieve. This is the process patented by MM. Lagier, Robiquet and Colin, in 1828.

It was first introduced into commerce by the house of Lagier and Thomas, at Avignon, in 1829.

The great advantage of garancine over madder is that it does not change the white, and that the bleaching of the stuffs dyed with it is reduced to a mere nothing. Hot water or bran are the only means used for clearing them. Madder is an adjective colour, that is to say, one which requires to be combined with some basic substance or mordant to render its fixture upon the dye-stuff permanent.]