Bartolomé de Medina (mining specialist)

Bartolomé de Medina (born around 1505 in Seville) was a businessman of Seville who invented the patio process.[1] He learned from a certain German Leonard the use of mercury and hereby improved the process of amalgamization of silver with mercury while mining in Mexico (1554?/1557?), especially in Pachuca de Soto (50 miles north of Mexico City), hereby revolutionizing the extraction of silver for more than two and a half centuries. This "dry" method of amalgamating mercury and silver, the so-called patio process, seems partly have been in use by the native Indians too. It avoided—due to the circumstances in the tree- and waterless highlands—the large quantities of wood and water which were necessary and in great quantities available in Europe.

References

  1. ↑ Alan Probert, "Bartolomé de Medina: The Patio Process and the Sixteenth Century Silver Crisis" in Bakewell, Peter, ed. Mines of Silver and Gold in the Americas. Variorum: Brookfield, 1997, p. 96.
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