1825,1826: Bromine - The book of science

Bromine
Atomic number 35
Rare dyes
Commentary

Heidelberg—Carl Jacob Löwig, Leopold Gmelin, Antoine Jérôme Balard elements

Bromine

Carl Jacob Löwig and
Antoine Jérôme Balard
independently found bromide.
Löwig isolated it
from waters of a mineral spring
at his hometown, Bad Kreuznach,
and took it to his professor Leopold Gmelin
who recognized it as a new element.
Balard extracted it
from ash of seaweed
from the salt marshes of Montpellier.
He proved it wasn’t iodine monochloride
and concluded it was a new element.

Atomic number 35

Bromine is a red-brown liquid
similar to chlorine and iodine
that fumes at room temperature
to form a corrosive and toxic vapor.
It forms a colorless soluble crystal
as a halide salt.
It is used in flame retardants
and flame-resistant polymers,
in insecticides,
and in disinfectants for hot tubs.
Its uses as a sedative,
and as a soil fumigant
to protect strawberries from nematodes,
have been discontinued.

Rare dyes

The rare purple dye, Tyrian purple,
an organic compound of bromine,
extracted from the secretions
of the predatory sea snail Murex brandaris,
was reserved for rulers of the Byzantine Empire
and Charlemagne the Emperor of Europe,
until the dye works in Constantinople was destroyed
and European royalty adopted carmine
extracted from the bodies and eggs
of cochineal insects. Doesn’t it seem
as though the symbolic importance of a thing
is far more important than its rarity,
although there does seem to have been
a certain correspondence between the two?

Bromine, hydrogen, nitrogen, oxygen, fluorine, chlorine, and iodine are nonmetals that exist naturally in a diatomic state. Even though it is toxic in its pure elemental form, it is essential for all animals, required for the formation of collagen.