gems, jade, Fischer-Book

A brief chemical investigation of jade by Karl Wilhelm Gottlob Kastner, published in the Journal für die Chemie, Physik und Mineralogie. The notice reports analytical observations intended to determine the composition of a material identified at the time as jade, reflecting the increasing application of chemical methods to minerals that had previously been characterized principally by their external properties. The paper is of interest to the history of jade studies as an early nineteenth-century attempt at chemical characterization. Because the precise mineralogical identity of the material analyzed has not been established here, the historical term “jade” should not be assumed to mean either nephrite or jadeite in the modern sense.