#DESICCATION IN A FIRE PROOF SAFE SKIN#

It was a bit earlier, in the Middle Ages, when the legend of the fire-proof salamander picked up another facet: asbestos, a highly fire-resistant mineral with fibers we now know can absolutely devastate our lungs, leading to mesothelioma and other awful diseases. Salamanders: The Furry Fire-Proof Heroes of the Working Man

#DESICCATION IN A FIRE PROOF SAFE SKIN#

It vomits from its mouth a milky slaver, one touch of which on any part of the human body causes all the hair to drop off, and the portion touched changes its color and breaks out in a tetter,” a sort of itchy skin disease. His Natural History, which has survived over the centuries as a towering catalog of everything from mining to zoology, describes the salamander as such: “It is so chilly that it puts out fire by its contact, in the same way as ice does. Part of the problem, it seems, is that in addition to disproving the salamander’s powers, Pliny also wrote extensively that it had such powers-and then some. And that its fur (huh?) could be used to weave fire-resistant garments. Some even believed it was born in fire, like the legendary Phoenix, only slimier and a bit less dramatic. Yet that didn’t stop the legend of the fire-proof salamander ( a name derived from the Persian meaning “fire within”) from persisting for 1,500 more years, from the Ancient Romans to the Middle Ages on up to the alchemists of the Renaissance. But the salamander didn’t … uh … make it.

He wanted to see if it could indeed not only survive the flames, but extinguish them, as Aristotle had claimed such creatures could. In the first century AD, Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder threw a salamander into a fire.

Desiccation in a fire proof safe