Making It and Using It

Aethiops Mineral was made by the simplest possible chemical method available in the whole alchemical repertoire: grinding metallic mercury together with powdered sulfur in a mortar until the two combined directly, without any need for heat, forming a dull, matte black powder quite unlike either of its two shiny, brightly colored starting ingredients, mercury's bright silver liquid sheen and sulfur's bright yellow crystalline color both vanishing entirely into a flat black compound. This direct combination was recognized by alchemical writers as chemically related to, yet visibly different from, the natural red mineral cinnabar, which was mined rather than made and which, when roasted, yielded metallic mercury by the reverse process; the black powder made by direct trituration of mercury and sulfur was clearly some kind of chemical cousin to cinnabar even though early chymists lacked the crystallographic concepts to explain why grinding the two elements together at room temperature produced a black rather than a red compound.

Medicinally, aethiops mineral was prescribed as a mercurial remedy for various complaints, a use carrying the same substantial risks of mercury toxicity that attended essentially every mercury based medicine of the period, and its black color and its production by simple trituration rather than by distillation or roasting gave it a somewhat distinct identity within the broader family of mercury preparations even as later chemists came to recognize its underlying chemical kinship with cinnabar and vermilion.