Zinc oxide has been in use since atleast 2000 B.C. as a constituent
of medicinal ointments for the treatment of boils and carbuncles
[1,13]. Somewhat later, ZnO ore was exploited as a source of zinc
for brass, a discovery usually attributed to the Romans [14] but
which may have come from India a century or so earlier [15]. Brass
∗ Corresponding author.
E-mail address: michael.cortie@uts.edu.au (M.B. Cortie).
could be produced by smelting a mixture of the powdered zinc
ore, charcoal and granules of copper, but a by-product was the ZnO
that collected on the walls and flues of the brass smelting furnaces.
The latter was known to the Romans as cadmia fornacis (furnace
accretions) and was purified for use in ointments. Use of ZnO in
skin lotions has continued up to the present day in the form of
a slurry of zinc and iron oxide known in many English-speaking
countries as “calamine lotion” [1]. There is also a rich tradition of
ZnO manufacture from about 1100 A.D. onwards in Iran [14,16] and
India [15]. There was significant production of zinc metal in China
from about 1600 onwards [14].