machines and come up again, that is by inclined shafts which are twisted like
a screw and have steps cut in the rock, as I have already described.
It remains for me to speak of the ailments and accidents of miners, and of
the methods by which they can guard against these, for we should always
devote more care to maintaining our health, that we may freely perform our
bodily functions, than to making profits. Of the illnesses, some affect the
joints, others attack the lungs, some the eyes, and finally some are fatal to
men.
Where water in shafts is abundant and very cold, it frequently injures
the limbs, for cold is harmful to the sinews. To meet this, miners should
make themselves sufficiently high boots of rawhide, which protect their
legs from the cold water ; the man who does not follow this advice will
suffer much ill-health, especially when he reaches old age. On the other
hand, some mines are so dry that they are entirely devoid of water, and this
dryness causes the workmen even greater harm, for the dust which is stirred
and beaten up by digging penetrates into the windpipe and lungs, and
produces difficulty in breathing, and the disease which the Greeks call
άσθμα. If the dust has corrosive qualities, it eats away the lungs, and
implants consumption in the body ; hence in the mines of the Carpathian
Mountains women are found who have married seven husbands, all of whom
this terrible consumption has carried off to a premature death. At Altenberg
in Meissen there is found in the mines black pompholyx, which eats wounds
and ulcers to the bone ; this also corrodes iron, for which reason the keys
of their sheds are made of wood. Further, there is a certain kind of cadmia 21
which eats away the feet of the workmen when they have become wet, and
similarly their hands, and injures their lungs and eyes. Therefore, for their
21This is given in the German translation as kobelt. The kobelt (or cobaltum of Agricola)
was probably arsenical-cobalt, a mineral common in the Saxon mines. The origin of the
application of the word cobalt to a mineral appears to lie in the German word for the gnomes
and goblins (kobelts) so universal to Saxon miners' imaginations,—this word in turn probably
being derived from the Greek cobalt (mimes). The suffering described above seems to have
been associated with the malevolence of demons, and later the word for these demons was
attached to this disagreeable ore. A quaint series of mining " sermons," by Johann Mathesius,
entitled Sarepta oder Bergpostill, Nürnberg, 1562, contains the following passage (p. 154)
which bears out this view. We retain the original and varied spelling of cobalt and also add
another view of Mathesius, involving an experience of Solomon and Hiram of Tyre with some
mines containing cobalt.
" Sometimes, however, from dry hard veins a certain black, greenish, grey or ash" coloured earth is dug out, often containing good ore. and this mineral being burnt gives strong
" fumes and is extracted like ' tutty.' It is called cadmia fossilis. You miners call it cobelt.
" Germans call the Black Devil and the old Devil's furies, old and black cobel, who injure people
" and their cattle with their witchcrafts. Now the Devil is a wicked, malicious spirit, who
" shoots his poisoned darts into the hearts of men, as sorcerers and witches shoot at the limbs
" of cattle and men, and work much evil and mischief with cobalt or hipomane or horses'
" poison. After quicksilver and rotgültigen ore, are cobalt and wismuth fumes ; these are the
" most poisonous of the metals, and with them one can kill flies, mice, cattle, birds, and men.
" So, fresh cobalt and kisswasser (vitriol ?) devour the hands and feet of miners, and the dust
" and fumes of cobalt kill many mining people and workpeople who do much work among the
" fumes of the smelters. Whether or not the Devil and his hellish crew gave their name to
" cobelt, or kobelt, nevertheless, cobelt is a poisonous and injurious metal even if it contains
" silver. I find in I. Kings 9, the word Cabul. When Solomon presented twenty towns in
" Galilee to the King of Tyre, Hiram visited them first, and would not have them, and said the
" land was well named Cabul as Joshua had christened it. It is certain from Joshua that these
