How urine gave us the devil's element

Urine has been a source of some major insights in chemistry. Without it we may not have fertilizers, matches or even some fizzy drinks. What's even more amazing is that urine led to the discovery of one of the first elements of the modern era. 

Back in medieval times, alchemists attempted to turn base metals into gold; they really did love looking for patterns, so if two things shared a similar color they would conclude they must have similar connections and yes you guessed it, they assumed there may be a connection between yellow urine and the color gold. 

This missing link came from the alchemists desperate attempt to find the philosophers stone (a stone they believed to turn anything into practically anything else). In the mid 1600's alchemist Hennig Brand thought he would be able to make the philosophers stone a reality with the crystals produced (struvite crystals) when you boil down urine. Brand was hoping for gold but he did discover something else and quite amazing to say the least. After a complicated process of boiling and separating and recombining, he produced a glowing magical white paste which glowed, perpetually, in the dark. he called it "cold fire." It was what we now call phosphorus (known as the devil's element). So no philosopher stone but it was the 13th element ever to be discovered. 

By figuring out how to extract crystals from urine; ancient alchemists moved from looking into what they thought was magic to discovering science. This led to more useful products as they were able to carefully control reactions which gave us dyes, medicines and the flammable properties of phosphorus which produced the first match. As the research into the production of phosphorus developed it became clear to chemists that phosphorus could be also obtained from bones.

Phosphoric acid as we know today turned out to be very useful; they are needed in fertilizers, fizz in carbonated drinks and removing rust. The phosphorus discovery also played a part in helping to open up the branch of chemistry known as organic chemistry which has given us the world as we know it today.

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