Page:Edward Thorpe — History of Chemistry, Volume I (1909).pdf/29

Rh Cinnabar, formerly obtained from Africa, and, by the Romans, from Spain, was also used externally in medicine, and was a highly prized pigment, whose value was known to the Chinese from very early times. The black sulphide of antimony, the stimmi and stibium of Dioscorides and Pliny, was employed by women in Asia, Greece, and latterly in Western Europe, and is still so used in the East, for blackening their eyelashes. Preparations of antimony were used in medicine. Realgar, the scarlet sulphide of arsenic, the sandarach of Aristotle, and the arrenichon of Theophrastus, was employed as a pigment, and also in medicine, both internally and externally. The yellow sulphide of arsenic or auri pigmentum (orpiment), was also used for the same purposes.

A variety of yellow and red ochres, in addition to the pigments above mentioned, were used by painters, such as rubrica, an iron ochre of a dark red colour, and sinopis, or reddle, obtained from Egypt, Lemnos, and the Balearic Isles. Oxides of manganese were used as brown pigments. The white pigment, paratonium, was probably meerschaum. Melinum was a variety of chalk found in Samos. The ancients were well acquainted with indigo and madder, and with the method of manufacturing lakes, which was employed by Grecian artists.

The famous purpurissum was chalk or clay