History,AND PHYSICAL AND CHEMICAL PROPETIES OF ASBESTOS

The use of asbestos can be traced back to ancient times. The Romans
drew their supplies from the Italian Alps, and even from the Ural. They
imagined it to be of vegetable origin : the highly silky appearance and unctuous
feel giving them the impression that it was an organic substance.

It is said that cremation cloth, in which dead bodies were enwrapped to be
consumed by fire, was made of asbestos. It appears, however, that the high cost
of making this asbestos cloth militated against its general use. Pliny refers to
It as a rare and costly cloth — ' linum vivum^ — ' the funeral dress of kings ' he
calls it : evidently assuming that it was of vegetable origin. The fibre used
came from the Italian Alps and was called ' amianthus.' It was apparently very
difiicult to spin, on account of its shortness; but judging from a piece of asbestos
cloth on exhibition in the Vatican, and which is said to have originated in the
days of ancient Rome, it is certain that vegetable fibre was intermixed with the
real asbestos fibre in the making of so-called asbestos cloths. There is, moreover,
according to Sir E. J. Smith, in the library of the Vatican, a winding sheet of
Italian asbestos, which, although very coarsely made, is of a very soft and silky
texture. This piece of cloth— perfectly preserved — was, together with some ashes,
found in a sarcophagus in the Via Praenestina in 1702. It was subsequently
placed in the Vatican Library by order of Clement XL It appears that some
vegetable fibre was used with real asbestos fibre in the making of the cloth;
because it is reported that, when fire was applied at one end of the cloth, it
burned with brightness, but leaving the real mineral fibre intact.