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“In the first century AD, Roman naturalist Pliny the Elder threw a salamander into a fire. He wanted to see if it could indeed not only survive the flames, but extinguish them, as Aristotle had claimed such creatures could. But the salamander didn’t … uh … make it.
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. Some even believed it was born in fire, like the legendary Phoenix, only slimier and a bit less dramatic. And that its fur (huh?) could be used to weave fire-resistant garments.”
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. You see, before we foolishly packed our modern buildings with the stuff, in the ancient world it was woven into royal garments. According to Pliny, because it doesn’t burn, it was used to wrap the dead on funeral pyres, resulting in pure ash unsullied by charred fabric.
Curiously, Marco Polo noted “the real truth is that the Salamander is no beast, as they allege in our part of the world, but is a substance found in the earth.” He relates the experiences of a Turkish acquaintance in China, where the man dug up “Salamander,” or asbestos as we know it, and processed its fibers into napkins. “When first made these napkins are not very white, but by putting them into the fire for a while they come out as white as snow. And so again whenever they become dirty they are bleached by being put in the fire.”
A comedy of errors led naturalists, including Conrad Gesner in his Historiae Animalium encyclopedia shown here, to depict the salamander as furry. Well, it was amusing for everyone besides the salamander, which prides itself on its diligent shaving regimen. Source: Archive.org
According to the 17th-century British polymath Sir Thomas Browne, asbestos was known metaphorically as “salamander’s wool,” based on the legendary fireproofing of the critter. But this was misinterpreted as being literal, so medieval bestiaries—the oftentimes vast encyclopedias of life—portrayed the salamander as furry (just furry, not a furry, thankfully).
For more information on how to obtain your own fire salamander … well, not really. But for the full story, see: