Portrait of Bartolome de Medina

People/engineer, scientist

Bartolome de Medina

Bartolome de Medina (1497–1585), engineer, scientist, from Spain. Linked to silver.

The lucky break

A Spanish businessman studying falling silver yields, he found that silver could be taken from ground ore with mercury and salt brine. In 1554 he set up a model patio refinery at Pachuca.1,2,3

Legacy

In the patio process ore was crushed to slime and mixed with salt, water, magistral and mercury, and horses trampled it. It needed little wood or water and replaced smelting as the main way to extract silver, driving output in Mexico and Peru.1,2,3

Story cards

Timeline

  1. early 1570sMercury amalgamation adopted for Potosi silver4
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Where next

Mines

InspiredCerro Rico de PotosiThe Pachuca refinery method that fed Potosi's silver boom.1

Events

InspiredMercury amalgamation adopted for Potosi silverHis patio process with mercury and horses replaced smelting.1

Sources

  1. Inductees from Mining's Past: Bartolome de Medina Mining Foundation of the Southwest
  2. Wikidata item Q809540
  3. File pages and licence metadata for portraits (via the Commons imageinfo/extmetadata API) Wikimedia Commons
  4. Mercury Production and Use in Colonial Andean Silver Production: Emissions and Health Implications (via Europe PMC) Environmental Health Perspectives (Robins and Hagan)

Pictures on this page: Bartolomé de Medina (MUNCYT, Eulogia Merle).jpg, Eulogia Merle (CC BY-SA 4.0).

From the Prospector Trails mining history dataset: each fact links to the source it was checked against. Figures are as the source gives them, in the money of their day. Not investment advice.

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Cover photos from Wikimedia Commons: Cerro Rico over Potosí by Jbmurray, CC BY-SA 4.0. Pictures: Potosi, Bolivia, NASA/METI/AIST/Japan Space Systems, and U.S./Japan ASTER Science Team (Public domain (NASA media, no copyright)); Timna in de Negevwoestijn; rotspartij "de zuilen van Salomo", Poll, Willem van de / Europeana (Public Domain Mark 1.0); South Africa: a crowd of people gathered outside The Goldfields offices in Johannesburg. 1896., Unknown (Wellcome Collection) (Public Domain Mark 1.0).