The Kerotakis Apparatus

Abstract

SOME interest has been taken in the summary of my Royal Institution lectures¹, and Dr. E. C. Stathis, of the University of Athens, has directed attention to a paper² by Prof. K. Zenghelis, of that University, on the kerotakis apparatus. Hoefer³, who reproduced a diagram of it from a Paris manuscript⁴, which⁵ is copied from the old Venice manuscript⁶, called it a 'bain-Marie à kérotakis', explaining that it was not a water bath (as this name would suggest) but a sand- or ash-bath. The same name is used by Berthelot⁷, who, however, gives a more adequate description of the apparatus, and in particular indicates that the name comes from that of the triangular palette used by painters in encaustic for keeping liquid the wax pigments. He gives several pictures of the apparatus, which make it clear that there were several forms, probably destined for different uses. The one under consideration is that which I described⁸ in 1929 as a small charcoal brazier, surmounted by a piece of apparatus the use of which is not immediately obvious, and in my lecture I stated that it was used for sublimation. The invention of this apparatus is attributed⁹ to the early chemist Maria the Jewess (first century A.D.).