De Re Metallica

by Georgius Agricola, Herbert Hoover (Translator), Lou Henry Hoover (Translator)

One of the most important scientific classics of all time, this 1556 work on mining was the first based on field research and observation and the methods of modern science. 289 authentic Renaissance woodcuts. Translated by Herbert Hoover. Reprint of English (1912) edition.

Genres: History, Science, Geology, Chemistry, Classics, Technology, Physics

638 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 1556

About the author

Georgius Agricola, the Latinized scholarly nom de plume of Georg Bauer, was the foremost Renaissance scholar of metallurgy and mining. Born in 1494, he received a classical education at the universities of Germany and Italy, graduating from Leipzig in 1518. He died in 1555, the year before the publication of his woodcut-illustrated masterwork, De re metallica.

Reviews

[Joe · Rating 5 out of 5]

THIS IS THE COOLEST BOOK I HAVE ACCIDENTALLY DISCOVERED. What began as a quest for a couple quick answers to research questions for a fantasy novel about mining, turned into a months-long annotation that expanded both my understanding of these processes and appreciation for the people (who at least used to be) involved. If you are even mildly interested in early metalworking/metallurgy, check this out.

[Tim Robinson]

First published in 1556, the book was written in a credulous age. It is only natural that Georgius Agricola should mention dowsing as a technique for finding valuable minerals. But he makes two very modern observations. Firstly, he says dowsing is a medieval technique that has no direct equivalent in classical times. Secondly, while some miners swear by dowsing, others regard it as completely useless.


His list of hazards applies equal to all ages, from ancient Greece to modern China. Miners are crushed by cave-ins and choke on dust. Chilled senseless, poisoned by arsenical fumes, or simply careless, they fall from ladders and break arms, legs and necks. They suffocate from poor ventilation and drown in sink holes.


Strangely, Agricola does not mention explosions. He is an expert in metals after all. Perhaps he has no experience of coal mines. Demons get only a couple of sentences. By contrast, he devotes a whole chapter to proper ventilation, sketching half a dozen schemes for forcing fresh air down a shaft. Mining is a hard school and there are enough real problems without invoking the supernatural. At least no 16th century miner ever died by electrocution!


The machines are the highlight of the book. There are dozens of winches, pumps and blowers, with axles, brakes, pipes, chains, buckets, toothed wheels and slotted collars. Just when I'm thinking that wood isn't strong enough for gears, he points out that these mechanical parts are made of iron or brass. This was the state of the art right up until the invention of rails and steam engines.


Agricola has clearly mastered the mechanical engineering. He is not so impressive when it comes to chemistry. He has copied passages from books on alchemy, probably without understanding it. (Mind you, the essence of an alchemical text is to impress the reader without giving away any secrets. They are designed to be useless.) His recipes for acids include some obvious duds, and he neglects to mention the distillation stage.


And so to law and finance. The ruler, the state and the landowner all want their cut, and if mining were easy, the miner would go to the wall. It is a capital-intensive business and rapacious princes have ruined many operators. I imagine that miners in the third world face exactly the same problems today.


However, no one gets paid unless someone works the mine, and if a miner is robbed it is unlikely that others will be keen to step in. In some areas, miners banded together to extort concessions, even winning the right to their own courts. (In England, these courts continued to protect miners right down to the 19th century and played a significant role during the canal boom.)


This is the first comprehensive work on mining in Europe. It covers every aspect from finding the seam to purifying the product, and despite the title it is not confined to metals. There is a chapter on extracting and purifying salts. It is a huge volume to begin with, and future president Hoover has doubled the size with his footnotes.

[Peter Tillman · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was a then-new translation of a late-medieval mining treatise by Herbert Hoover and his wife in 1912. Hoover was a famous mining engineer before he turned to politics, and (I think) a better President than most believe. Here's the Wiki page for this classic, which was first published in 1556 by Georg Bauer: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/De_re_m...
Per Wiki, "The book remained the authoritative text on mining for 180 years after its publication. It was also an important chemistry text for the period" Wiki gives a nice selection of the classic woodcut illos, all of which are available online (as is the text).

The illustrations of medieval mining machinery are what I remember best, and they are well-reproduced in the Dover reprint of 1986. Good old Dover! I wonder if I have a copy? Recommended reading for mining and history buffs. You might find it unexpectedly fascinating. 4+ stars.

[Pat Cummings · Rating 4 out of 5]

The first illustrated "how-to" book for mining and metallurgy was written by the German Georg Bauer in the mid-16th century, and has been used from then to now; only minor changes were needed to accommodate fairly modern methods. ("Bauer" [Farmer] was Latinized to "Agricola", probably by his teachers at the University of Leipzig.)

But Agricola was a teacher, philosopher and doctor as well as the world's first industrial publicist, and the opening of De Re Metallica ("Concerning Metals") reflects his philosophical bent.

While re-reading it recently, I was struck by this passage in Chapter One. In the midst of a dissertation on the economics and politics of mining and the monetization of metals, Agricola diverts to make several points about the "evil" of metal weapons. It does not take much editing to apply his thoughts directly to today's debate on the "evil" of gun ownership.

The curses which are uttered against iron, copper and lead have no weight with prudent and sensible men, because if these metals were done away with, men, as their anger swelled and their fury became unbridled, would assuredly fight like wild beasts, with fists, heels, nails and teeth. They would strike each other with sticks, hit one another with stones, or dash their foes to the ground. Moreover, a man does not kill another with iron alone, but slays by means of poison, starvation or thirst. He may seize him by the throat and strangle him; he may bury him alive in the ground; he may immerse him in the water and suffocate him; he may burn or hang him; so that he can make every element a participant in the death of men... From these examples we see that it is not metals which are to be condemned, but our vices, such as anger, cruelty, discord, passion for power, avarice and lust. —Georgius Agricola, De Re Metallica

So it is not explosives that carry evil, it is the suicide bomber who carries the explosives. It is not the knife in the hand of the chef that stabs a man, but the one in the hand of the murderer. And it is not guns that kill. In all these examples, it is the murderer's desire to kill which is at fault, not the instruments used to act on those desires.

Notes for the eBook Version: The Kindle version of the book is available for free by the Internet Archive, with the quotation cited above at location 1268.

This free version of De Re Metallica , however, is poorly formatted for an eBook, with no Index or Table of Contents. It has many OCR typos and footnotes inset in the text.

The captions for the woodcut illustrations are essential to understanding their worth, but they are very difficult to read on the device, even with Zoom.

The best source for the serious reader is the paper edition.

[Linda Franklin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Okay, I confess, I didn't so much as "read it" as skim it and read some pages. I was fascinated that Pres. Herbert Hoover, long before he was president, and his wife did this book. They were both engineers. TR. from the Latin, and as Hoover noted in the introduction, Georgius Agricola was German, and many of the words and phrases and terms he used were sort of GermanicLatin fusions, which Hoover sought to translate correctly and fairly. I learned a lot of things, and really enjoyed the section on using forked Hazel twigs to find veins of desired metal. Yes! dowsing, in the first part of the 16th century. Agricola hired several artists to make extremely detailed woodcuts of every phase of mining, smelting, etc. I read about how the smelters ate BUTTER (!) to ameliorate the fumes of lead/silver smelting. OMG. The fumes in the entire process must have been terrible. He says that the miners, although some died in terrible accidents, were not put off by that, and there is a fair amount of sociological/political remarks about the dangers of wealth and greed. So in many respects the book was very timely. I took photos of some of the woodcuts, esp. details, to put on my Instagram account . . . @barkinglips PS. I got the Dover hardcover, not paperback, from the Pratt Library. Surprised to be entrusted with it. Fat, big, wonderful printing on good paper.
~ Linda Campbell Franklin

[John · Rating 5 out of 5]

A book every engineer should have.

[IIIIIIKKKKKEEEEE · Rating 5 out of 5]

A hyper specific book on midieval mining and one of the greatest translations. The era of pre-enlightnement though filled with alchemy knew very much

[Eva · Rating 3 out of 5]

Agricola decidiu fazer uma recolha de todo o conhecimento minério que podia numa tentativa de preservar e avançar os conhecimentos sobre um tema tão desprezado. Foram precisos dois séculos para haver um trabalho superior ao dele.
Isto foi escrito em latim apesar dele ser alemão, porque era esse o standard académico da altura e porque Agricola era um bocado extra. Latim morreu antes de conhecer boa parte dos instrumentos, estruturas, empregos, e minérios descritos em De Re Metallica, o que leva a que a tradução do trabalho seja dificílima porque ninguém sabia bem de que raio ele estava a falar, especialmente em tempos modernos. E.g. os tradutores ingleses queixam-se de não perceberem que sistema de pesos é que ele usa no livro porque nunca faz comparações com algo de referência para nós.
E não é só nos pesos que se sente a falta do rigor científico moderno: temos expressões tipo "a parede deve ser tão grossa como um pote relativamente grosso" ou momentos como na descrição das dimensões possíveis de fissuras, em que ele durante umas dúzias de linhas diz que foram encontradas fissuras assim e assado, algumas cozido, e ali naquele caso frito... quando podia ter escrito só "costumam ser de x a y tamanho, com a maior conhecida de z tamanho".

Para quem gosta de história recomendo espreitar, mas aviso que as secções das receitas para testar ou separar metais bem podiam ainda estar em latim. As descrições de todo o tipo de estruturas relevantes são também um extenuante vómito de palavras mas ainda seria possível recriar o que ele descreve com alguma atenção. Livro definitivamente mais engraçado para alguém familiar com alguma das artes descritas e que quer ter uma ideia de como se faziam as coisas em 1500.

[Yogi Saputro · Rating 4 out of 5]

I stumbled upon the book title on an online forum, saying this book is so valuable in preserving human Civilization. I second that opinion. This books serves as foundation rock of modern society. Firm but well hidden.

What makes this one so valuable? It describes detailed knowledge that was usually passed down in limited ways. Mining and smelting are strategic industries. Old techniques are often lost because they were tightly sealed secrets, just like greek fire and damascus steel. This book stands as milestone in vast human knowledge, ensuring some of them are preserved and can be improved.

Some details are fascinating. People in old days are as ingenious as people today. It also good entry for metalurgy amd mining. The English translation and footnotes are easy to understand as well.

Overall, very interesting book.

[Brian Finn · Rating 3 out of 5]

A mining manual from 1500s Germany. I can’t be too critical of it nor can I praise it too much. Think of this as one of the first “For Dummies” books. Agricola is quite technical and very descriptive, which was a little boring for someone who doesn’t know a thing about mining. But, he takes quite a humanist approach to the subject - not necessarily praising it 100% or hating on it 100%. The woodcuts went crazy. And the Hoover translation! Their footnotes !! So much information that I actually really enjoyed.

[James · Rating 3 out of 5]

A work on mining and metalworking of historic interest. A dry read.

[John Scudder · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great wood prints, faithful translation as well I loved the part where Agricola presents both sides on the issues of metal being satanic vs godly and how you can just not pay workers comp if your workers die in your terribly unsafe mine. So good I almost forgot the numerous crimes of Herbert Hoover before during and after his presidency.