Editing Metal (section)

===Middle Ages===
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| quote=Gold is for the mistress—silver for the maid—<br />Copper for the craftsman cunning at his trade.<br />"Good!" said the Baron, sitting in his hall,<br />"But Iron—Cold Iron—is master of them all."
| salign=right| source=from [[Cold Iron (poem)|Cold Iron]] by [[Rudyard Kipling]]<ref>Published in ''[[The Delineator]]'', Sept. 1909. Reprinted as the introduction to [[Rewards and Fairies]] in 1910.</ref>| bgcolor=Cornsilk
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Arabic and medieval [[alchemy|alchemists]] believed that all metals and matter were composed of the principle of sulfur, the father of all metals and carrying the combustible property, and the principle of mercury, the mother of all metals{{#tag:ref|In ancient times, lead was regarded as the father of all metals.|group=n}} and carrier of the liquidity, fusibility, and volatility properties. These principles were not necessarily the common substances [[sulfur]] and [[mercury (element)|mercury]] found in most laboratories. This theory reinforced the belief that all metals were destined to become gold in the bowels of the earth through the proper combinations of heat, digestion, time, and elimination of contaminants, all of which could be developed and hastened through the knowledge and methods of alchemy.{{#tag:ref|[[Paracelsus]], a later [[German Renaissance]] writer, added the third principle of salt, carrying the nonvolatile and incombustible properties, in his [[Paracelsus#Philosophy|''tria prima'' doctrine]]. These theories retained the four classical elements as underlying the composition of sulfur, mercury, and salt.|group=n}}

Arsenic, zinc, antimony, and bismuth became known, although these were at first called semimetals or bastard metals on account of their immalleability. [[Albertus Magnus]] is believed to have been the first to isolate arsenic from a compound in 1250, by heating soap together with [[arsenic trisulfide]]. Metallic zinc, which is brittle if impure, was isolated in India by 1300 AD. The first description of a procedure for isolating antimony is in the 1540 book ''[[De la pirotechnia]]'' by [[Vannoccio Biringuccio]]. Bismuth was described by Agricola in ''[[De Natura Fossilium]]'' (c. 1546); it had been confused in early times with tin and lead because of its resemblance to those elements.

<gallery widths="165px" heights="165px">
File:Arsen 1a.jpg|Arsenic, sealed in a container to prevent tarnishing
File:Zinc fragment sublimed and 1cm3 cube.jpg|Zinc fragments and a 1&nbsp;cm<sup>3</sup> cube
File:Antimony-4.jpg|Antimony, showing its brilliant lustre
File:Wismut Kristall und 1cm3 Wuerfel.jpg|Bismuth in crystalline form, with a very thin oxidation layer, and a 1&nbsp;cm<sup>3</sup> bismuth cube
</gallery>