Bacon's Salts

Five years ago, the late Dr. William Romaine Newbold, University of Pennsylvania linguist and philosopher, declared that he had deciphered the crabbed symbols in which Roger Bacon, fearing for his life in the superstitious 13th Century, noted down his scientific experiments. Last week, at a meeting held in Dr. Newbold's memory, University of Pennsylvania professors verified their dead colleague's translations. A chemist in their number, Dr. Hiram S. Lukens, had taken to his laboratory a quaint recipe by which Friar Bacon had said he obtained salts of copper. Dr. Lukens had never seen such a formula before, but it worked. In announcing his success, Dr. Lukens made a grave omission, failing to name the mediaeval ingredients. Bat's blood? Sea water? Pig bristles? Crocodile teeth?

Oxford man, scorner of the pedestrian scholarship of his time, indefatigable linguist, doctor of theology and doctor miraculorum (wonders) at Paris, friend of Bishop Robert Grosseteste of Lincoln, and of Guy de Foulques (later Pope Clement IV), this Franciscan monk, Roger Bacon, had few intellectual peers in his century, whether or not he invented the contrivances dubiously attributed to him: a telescope, burning glasses, spectacles. His most popularly famed experiments were with gunpowder, of which he was the first important historian rather than the "inventor."