Note 571 — Chapter IV · GALEN
Reading edition
Kühn, XII, 226-9. See the article of Berthelot just cited in a preceding note for an explanation of the three names and of Galen’s experience. Mr. Hoover, in his translation of Agricola’s work on metallurgy (1912), pp. 573-4, says, “It is desirable here to enquire into the nature of the substances given by all of the old mineralogists under the Latinized Greek terms, chalcitis, misy, sory, and melanteria.” He cites Dioscorides (V, 75-77) and Pliny (NH, XXXIV, 29-31) on the subject, but not Galen. Yule (1903) I, 126, notes that Marco Polo’s account of Tutia and Spodium “reads almost like a condensed translation of Galen’s account of Pompholyx and Spodos.”