These Are A Few of Our Nastiest Things

FIGURE 32. Mill for grinding the components of gunpowder (ca. 75% saltpetre the remainder roughly equal parts of charcoal and sulfur) depicted in Bianco s 1598 work on artillery and fireworks (from The Roy G. Neville Historical Chemical Library, a collection in the Othmer Library, CHF). 

A great and incomparable speculation is whether the discovery of compounding the powder used for guns came to its first inventor from the demons or by chance. 

At many points in Book Ten, Biringuccio laments the irony that learned and decent men discover and invent explosives that maim and kill. He then dutifully describes their fabrication in full detail. For example, Book Ten, Chapter Eight is titled The Method of Preparing Fire Pots and of Making Balls of Incendiary Composition to Be Thrown by Hand. Biringuccio begins this chapter (in the 1559 edition)  

There have always been in this world men of such keen intelligence that with their discourse they have been capable of infinite and various inventions that are as beneficial as they are simultaneously harmful to the human body. 

The Norton History of Chemistry, W.W. Norton Co., New York, 1993, p. 6. Brock notes that in Taoism, Yang is the male, hot principle, Yin is the female, cool principle. In Western alchemical beliefs, sulfur is the male principle (Sol) and mercury the female principle (Luna). 

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