P for Phosphorus! Alchemy Week pt. 1

                Many Medieval and Renaissance philosophers were brought into the world of alchemy by the allure of it's ultimate prize, transforming base metals into gold. The race was on, the first alchemist to discover the recipe would doubtlessly become the richest man in the world! The only problem was no one had a clue as to what they were supposed to do. Some folks attempted to combine various metals and concoctions, and some other people attempted a much more... unorthodox approach.

Thanks Google Image!

                  Yup! Back in the day, urine was thought to contain gold. The gold was thought to be the source of the yellow coloring in urine (spoiler alert: It isn't). Anyway, this brings us to Hennig Brand.

Pictured: Brand doing SCIENCE!

                    In 1669, Brand was fiddling around with a few hundred liters of urine in order to extract gold from the stuff, when he discovered Phosphorus (pictured above). His recipe for the concoction is as follows:

                     1) Boil urine to reduce it to a thick syrup.

                     2) Heat until red oil distills from it, and draw that off.

                     3) Allow the remainder to cool, leaving a black spongey upper part and a salty lower part. 

                     4) Discard salt, mix red oil back with black spongey material. 

                     5) Heat mixture strongly for 16 hours.

                     6) First white fumes come off, then oil, then phosphorus.

                     7) The phosphorus may be passed into cold water to solidify. 

                     Brand used 5,500 liters of urine to produce just 120 grams of phosphorus. 

Yes, 5,500 liters of urine is a lot. And there is not documented information
on how long it took for him to produce that much. Probably a billion years.

                   ... Which is funny because he could have produced around 605 times more phosphorus if he didn't remove the salts, which contained most of the necessary nitrates.

                    But for a man of his time, accidentally discovering phosphorus must have been pretty cool.