Editing Zinc (section)

===Early studies and naming===
Zinc was distinctly recognized as a metal under the designation of ''Yasada'' or Jasada in the medical Lexicon ascribed to the Hindu king Madanapala (of Taka dynasty) and written about the year 1374.<ref name="Ray1903">{{cite book|last=Ray|first=Prafulla Chandra|title=A History of Hindu Chemistry from the Earliest Times to the Middle of the Sixteenth Century, A.D.: With Sanskrit Texts, Variants, Translation and Illustrations|publisher=The Bengal Chemical & Pharmaceutical Works, Ltd|date=1903|edition=2nd|volume=1|pages=157–158|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=DL1HAAAAIAAJ}} (public domain text)</ref> Smelting and extraction of impure zinc by reducing calamine with wool and other organic substances was accomplished in the 13th century in India.<ref name="CRCp4-41">{{harvnb|CRC|2006|p='''4'''–41}}<!-- sic "-" not a range! --></ref><ref name="iza">{{cite web|last=Habashi|first=Fathi|title=Discovering the 8th Metal|publisher=International Zinc Association (IZA)|url=http://www.iza.com/Documents/Communications/Publications/History.pdf|archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20090304154217/http://www.iza.com/Documents/Communications/Publications/History.pdf|archive-date=March 4, 2009|access-date=December 13, 2008}}</ref> The Chinese did not learn of the technique until the 17th century.<ref name="iza" />

[[File:Zinc symbol (fixed width).svg|thumb|left|[[Alchemical symbol]] for the element zinc]]
[[Alchemy|Alchemists]] burned zinc metal in air and collected the resulting zinc oxide on a [[Condenser (heat transfer)|condenser]]. Some alchemists called this zinc oxide ''lana philosophica'', Latin for "philosopher's wool", because it collected in wooly tufts, whereas others thought it looked like white snow and named it ''nix album''.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Arny|first=Henry Vinecome|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=gRNKAAAAMAAJ|title=Principles of Pharmacy|publisher=W. B. Saunders company|date=1917|edition=2nd|page=483}}</ref>

The name of the metal was probably first documented by [[Paracelsus]], a Swiss-born German alchemist, who referred to the metal as "zincum" or "zinken" in his book ''Liber Mineralium II'', in the 16th century.<ref name="iza" /><ref>{{Cite book|title=Georgius Agricola de Re Metallica|first=Herbert Clark|last=Hoover|publisher=Kessinger Publishing|date=2003|page=409|isbn=978-0-7661-3197-2}}</ref> The word is probably derived from the German {{lang|de|zinke}}, and supposedly meant "tooth-like, pointed or jagged" (metallic zinc crystals have a needle-like appearance).<ref>{{Cite book|title=Ullmann's Encyclopedia of Industrial Chemistry|last=Gerhartz|display-authors=etal |edition=5th|date=1996|isbn=978-3-527-20100-6|publisher=VHC|page=509|first=Wolfgang}}</ref> ''Zink'' could also imply "tin-like" because of its relation to German ''zinn'' meaning tin.<ref>{{Cite book|author=Skeat, W. W|title=Concise Etymological Dictionary of the English Language|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=ls_XijT33IUC&pg=PA622|page=622|publisher=Cosimo, Inc.|date=2005|isbn=978-1-59605-092-1}}</ref> Yet another possibility is that the word is derived from the [[Persian language|Persian]] word {{lang|fa|سنگ}} ''seng'' meaning stone.<ref>{{Cite book|title=Handbook of Extractive Metallurgy|author=Fathi Habashi|date=1997|isbn=978-3-527-28792-5|publisher=Wiley-VHC|page=642}}</ref> The metal was also called ''Indian tin'', ''tutanego'', ''calamine'', and ''spinter''.<ref name="Lehto1968p822" />

German metallurgist [[Andreas Libavius]] received a quantity of what he called "calay" (from the Malay or Hindi word for tin) originating from [[Malabar Coast|Malabar]] off a cargo ship captured from the Portuguese in the year 1596.<ref>{{Cite book|last=Lach|first=Donald F.|title=Asia in the Making of Europe|chapter=Technology and the Natural Sciences|page=426|chapter-url=https://books.google.com/books?id=N0xD7BYXv_YC&pg=PA426|date=1994|isbn=978-0-226-46734-4|publisher=[[University of Chicago Press]]}}</ref> Libavius described the properties of the sample, which may have been zinc. Zinc was regularly imported to Europe from the Orient in the 17th and early 18th centuries,<ref name="iza" /> but was at times very expensive.{{efn|An [[East India Company]] ship carrying a cargo of nearly pure zinc metal from the Orient sank off the coast [[Sweden]] in 1745.{{harv|Emsley|2001|p=502}}}}