Cadmium was discovered in 1817 by the German chemist Friedrich Stromeyer, who traced a discoloration in a sample of zinc carbonate to a hidden new metal. He named it from cadmia, the old Latin and Greek name for calamine, the zinc ore in which he had found it. Cadmium is a soft, silvery-white metal, chemically close to zinc, and notably toxic; it was long used in bright yellow and red pigments and in rechargeable batteries and plating. Because of its toxicity many former uses in pigments, plating and plastics stabilisers have since been restricted, but cadmium remains important in nickel-cadmium rechargeable batteries and in some thin-film solar cells and specialised alloys.
Cadmium's toxicity produced one of the twentieth century's starkest environmental health disasters: in Japan's Jinzu River basin, decades of cadmium-laced mine wastewater contaminated rice paddies and drinking water, causing itai-itai disease, so named for the pained cries of sufferers whose bones softened and fractured; the disease, recognised from the 1910s but not officially linked to cadmium until the 1960s, became one of Japan's four major officially recognised pollution diseases. Cadmium yellow, meanwhile, became a favourite pigment of painters including Van Gogh and Monet for its intense, stable brightness, a striking contrast between the same element's artistic value and its industrial harm.