Simon Ings

Who knew that chemistry could be so entertaining?

Peter Wothers’s enchanting history of the naming of the elements is full of demons, imps and daft experiments

issue 14 December 2019

Here’s how the element antimony got its name. Once upon a time (according to the 17th-century apothecary Pierre Pomet), a German monk (moine in French) noticed its purgative effects in animals. Fancying himself as a physician, he fed it to

his own Fraternity… but his Experiment succeeded so ill that every one who took of it died.

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