Uranium in the History of Medicine

Abstract

Joachimsthal in Saxony was an important silver mining district since the Middle Ages when around the 1770s production started to decrease and the mining town was about to become a ghost town. It was at that time that Martin Heinrich Klaproth (1743-1817) a pharmacist in Berlin who became later professor of chemistry at the Royal Mining Academy, discovered that the black mineral in the ore can be used to give glass a brilliant yellow color with green fluorescence when added to the molten batch. He was also convinced that this mineral must have contained a new metal. This discovery coincided with the discovery in 1781 of a new planet in the solar system by his compatriot William Herschel who had immigrated to England in 1757 and called the planet Uranus. Hence Klaproth named the new metal “uranium” to honor his compatriot. In 1789 he was able to isolate a black heavy solid from the ore which he thought it to be the new metal. Since that time uranium started to play a dominant role in the history of medicine.