Salamander's Wool: The Historical Evidence for Textiles Woven with Asbestos Fibre

References

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• S. William Beck, The Draper’s Dictionary (London, 1884 ), p. 9.
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• De materia medica, 5.138.
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• De Defectu Oraculorum, 43.
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• Pliny the Elder, Natural History, XXVIL, 54.
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• Pliny, ibid., XIX, 4. Surviving finds of asbestos textiles from the Roman and late Roman periods include a burial site in Koln which contained the remains of a cloth or cushion stuffing made of asbestos. J. P. Wild, Textile Manufacture in the Northern Roman Provinces (Cambridge, 1970 ), p. 21. Wrongly ascribed references to the use of asbestos by the Romans which were based on misunderstandings of the original sources are pointed out in Kevin Browne and Robert Murray, ‘Asbestos and the Romans’, Lancet, 336 (18 August 1990), 445.
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• Cited in Berthold Laufer, Asbestos and Salamander, an essay in Chinese and Hellenistic Folklore (undated, c. 1920 ), p. 328.
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• Cited in James Yates, Textrinum Antiquorum: An Account of the Art of Weaving among the Ancients. Part 1: on the raw materials used for weaving (London, 1843 ), p. 360. See also Maurice Lombard, Etudes d’economie medievale III: Les textiles dans le monde musulman VIIe–XIIe (Paris, 1978), pp. 115–16, for a discussion of other uses of asbestos fibre in North Africa. I am grateful to Patricia Baker for this reference.
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• Laufer, op. cit., p. 327.
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• Hierocles was quoted by Stephanus Byzantius. Yates, op. cit., p. 360.
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• These works are cited and discussed in Joges Chandra Ray, ‘Textile Industry in Ancient India’, The Journal of the Bihar and Orissa Research Society, 3, part 2, June 1917, p. 220; and M. Chandra, ‘Indian Costumes and Textiles from the 8th to 12th century’, Journal of Indian Textile History, 5 (1960), 17. I am grateful to Rosemary Crill for the latter reference.
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• A. Wylie, ‘Asbestos in China’, Chinese Researches, 3 (Shanghai, 1897), 141–54; Berthold Laufer, Asbestos and Salamander, an essay in Chinese and Hellenistic Folklore (undated, c. 1920); J. Needham, Science and Civilisation in China, 3 (Cambridge, 1959), 656–61.
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• Liang-ho Su and Zhong-jun Li, ‘Researches on the records about asbestos in ancient Chinese Literature’, Proceedings of the Fourth International Conference on Asbestos (Turin, May 1980 ), p. 7.
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• Liang-ho Su, ibid., pp. 10–11.
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• Yates, op. cit., pp. 358–60, lists the following references: Majolus ( Dier.Canicular, Parti, Colloq.xx, p. 453) says that in the year 1566 he saw at Venice Podocattarus, a knight of Cyprus, and a writer on the history of that island, who exhibited at Venice cloth made of asbestos of his country, which he threw into the fire, and took it out uninjured and made quite clean. A piece of asbestos cloth was found in 1633 at Puzzuolo, and was preserved in the Barberini Gallery (Keysler’s Travels, IL (London, 1760), 292). Also in the Museo Borbonico at Naples there is a considerable piece of asbestos cloth found at Vasto in the Abruzzi, the ancient Histonium.
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• F. G. Payne, National Museum of Wales: Guide to the Collection of Samplers and Embroideries (Cardiff, 1939 ), pp. 10–13. Further references in medieval literature are cited in Laufer, op. cit., pp. 323–24.
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• I am very grateful to Caterina Napoleone for this reference. The watercolour is in the Royal Collection, and will be included in the forthcoming volume on Minerals and Curiosities in the Catalogue Raisonne of Cassiano dal Pozzo’s Paper Museum. The Assistant General Editor of the Catalogue, Henrietta Ryan, Deputy Curator of the Print Room of the Royal Library, has also been most helpful with information on Cassiano.
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• Pseudodoxia Epidemica, Part 3 chapter 14. Browne’s eloquent text, in more detail, reads: that a Salamander is able to live in flames, to endure and put out fire, is an assertion, not only of great antiquity, but confirmed by frequent, and not contemptible testimonie ... It hath been much promoted by Stories of incombustible napkins and textures which endure the fire, whose materials are called by the name of Salamanders wool… Nor is this Salamanders wooll desumed from any Animal, but a Mineral substance Metaphorically so called from this received opinion. For beside Germanicus his heart, and Pyrrhus his great Toe, which would not burn with the rest of their bodies, there are in the number of Minerals some bodies incombustible; more remarkably that which the Ancients named Asbeston, and Pancirollus treats of in the Chapter of Linum vivum. Whereof by Art were weaved Napkins, Shirts, and Coats, inconsumable by fire; and wherein in ancient times to preserve their ashes pure, and without commixture, they burnt the bodies of Kings. A Napkin hereof Pliny reports that Nero had, and the like saith Paulus Venetus the Emperour of Tartary sent unto Pope Alexander; and also aYrms that in some part of Tartary there were Mines of Iron whose filaments were weaved into incombustible cloth. Which rare Manufacture, although delivered for lost by Pancirollus, yet Salmuth his Commentator affirmeth, that one Podocaterus a Cyprian, had shewed the same at Venice; and his materials were from Cyprus, where indeed Dioscorides placeth them; the same is also ocularly confirmed by Vives upon Austin, and Maiolus in his Colloquies.
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• Journal de Letterati, 15 March 1671. This had been reported in the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 6, for 19 June 1671.
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• NHM, 61065; also numbered 802 and Sloane 188.
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• Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, 22, 911–13.
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• Historia Naturalis Lapidis (Brunswick, 1727). Cited by Yates, op. cit., p. 361.
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• James Allerman and Brooke Mossman, ‘Asbestos Revisited’, Scientific American, July 1997, pp. 70–75; Douglas H. K. Lee and Irving J. Selikoff, ‘Historical Background to the Asbestos Problem’, Environmental Research, 18 (1979), 300–14, 301; J. Zussmann, ‘Asbestos nature and history’, CIBA- GEIGY Review (1972/2), pp. 3–5.
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• Peter Tandy kindly gave me access to these specimens.
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• Acquired by the NHM in 1913, presented by the Earl of Denbigh. No acquisition number.
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• Clifford Frondel, ‘Benjamin Franklin’s purse and the early history of asbestos in the United States’, in Archives of Natural History, 15 (3) (1998), 281–87. See also Richard Altick, The Shows of London (Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1978 ), pp. 15–16.
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• A. Tara, Dell’amianto, inaugural dissertation (University of Pavia, 1848 ), quoted by Lee and Selikoff, op. cit., p. 301. Mrs Bury Palliser in her History of Lace (first edition 1865, revised 1902) also mentions asbestos lace, describing a specimen in the Cabinet of Natural History at the Garden of Plants, Paris.
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• Charles Tomlinson ed., Cyclopaedia of Useful Arts Mechanical and Chemical, Manufactures, Mining and Engineering (London, 1862 ). See also Michel Valentin, Travail des Hommes et Savants Oublies (Paris, i978).
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• Chief Inspector of Factories and Workshops, Report.. for the Year 1898 (1899), Part ii, p. 171. See also Kevin Browne, ‘Asbestos-Related Disorders’ in W. Parkes ed., Occupational Lung Disorders, 3rd edn (Oxford, 1994), pp. 411–85.
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