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CHAP. 37.—DIPHRYX.

There is another product of these furnaces, which is easily distinguished from smegma, and which the Greeks call "diphryx,"1 from its being twice calcined. This substance is prepared from three different sources. It is prepared, they say, from a mineral pyrites, which is heated in the furnace until it is converted by calcination into a red earth. It is also made in Cyprus, from a slimy substance extracted from a certain cavern there, which is first dried and then gradually heated, by a fire made of twigs. A third way of making it, is from the residue in the copper-furnaces that falls to the bottom. The difference between the component parts of the ore is this; the copper itself runs into the receivers, the scoriæ make their escape from the furnace, the flower becomes sublimated, and the diphryx remains behind.

Some say that there are certain globules in the ore, while being smelted, which become soldered together; and that the rest of the metal is fused around it, the mass itself not becoming liquefied, unless it is transferred to another furnace, and forming a sort of knot, as it were, in the metal. That which remains after the fusion, they say, is called "diphryx." Its use in medicine is similar to that of the substances mentioned above;2 it is desiccative, removes morbid excrescenses, and acts as a detergent. It is tested by placing it on the tongue, which ought to be instantly parched by it, a coppery flavour being perceptible.

1 From δὶς φρυγέσθαι.—" being twice calcined."—B.

2 The Scoriæ, Cadmia, and Flos, which are described in Chapters 22, 23 and 24.—B.

The Natural History. Pliny the Elder. John Bostock, M.D., F.R.S. H.T. Riley, Esq., B.A. London. Taylor and Francis, Red Lion Court, Fleet Street. 1855.

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