The Pharmaceutical Journal
Vol 280 No 7494 p346
22 March 2008

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Libraries and the odour of knowledge

Greek fire: a hazardous weapon of war for both operator and enemy

Celebrating the centenary of a devastating astronomical event

Libraries and the odour of knowledge

Libraries are among the world’s greatest wonders. Merlin has “collected” them for years, and delights in his assemblage of temporary university library cards (mostly long since out of date).

One of the most magical is Cambridge University Library. It is an imposing building just across from the Backs and behind Clare College, and its tower can be seen for miles.

The library is currently being greatly extended, to allow for a few million more books, as it is one of the country’s official book repositories which receive a copy of every book printed in the UK. It may lack the dramatic architecture of the Bodleian in Oxford or the John Rylands in Manchester, but it is still an impressive building.

The most noticeable feature, however, of academic libraries is the smell. Not the rather unpleasant aura of unwashed humanity that often pervades public libraries, but the scent of ancient books. Most great libraries have long rows of books with leather bindings, often old runs of journals, which are rarely consulted, and it seems to be these which perfume the air.

The odour is difficult to describe, being slightly pungent and somewhat peppery. Merlin recently experienced this odour in his own study, when he found a need to consult his old university copy of Trease’s ‘Textbook of pharmacognosy’.

Paper of all types, as it ages, emits a complex mixture of organic compounds, depending on the nature of the paper. Acid-catalysed hydrolysis leads to the breaking of cellulose chains to produce substances such as furfural, while oxidation leads to the formation of carbonyls and the emission of volatile compounds such as formic and acetic acids. The degradation of lignin-containing papers contributes a range of aromatic compounds.

So far, more than 100 different compounds, including acids, aldehydes, alcohols, ketones, alkanes and terpenes, have been identified in books and paper, and it is these that seem to give academic libraries their particular odour.

Cambridge University Library, in collaboration with other libraries, including the British Library, is carrying out a major study into the degradation of paper in books. It has been suggested that some books may give off compounds that then accelerate the process of deterioration in adjacent volumes.

One part of the study, therefore, involves comparing the condition of identical volumes under the storage conditions in different libraries. The study, which has been funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, will help in the conservation of important books and journals in the future.

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Greek fire: a hazardous weapon of war for both operator and enemy

Historians have long argued over the nature of Greek fire — a weapon supposedly used in ancient times and considered to have been a primitive form of napalm.

A recent article in Minerva: The International Review of Ancient Art and Archaeology states that the term Greek fire is an invention of western writers, and that the Byzantines, who actually used it, referred to it as liquid fire.

There was no secret ingredient to Greek fire, which was most likely a mix of crude petroleum with resins. A 10th century treatise states that there were many wells yielding “naphtha” in the areas surrounding the Black Sea, particularly in that now known as the Crimea.

The weapon consisted of a bronze tube, referred to as the syphon and which was probably a type of force-pump. The tube was mounted at the prow of a ship, usually a dromon (Byzantine war galley) and could be swivelled to aim at an enemy ship. Relatively calm sea conditions would have been needed for effective use.

The operator was protected by a wooden shield, but the use of the weapon must have been most hazardous. The naphtha was heated over an open fire on the dromon and resins then dissolved in the hot naphtha. The mixture was propelled from the tube by hand and ignited as it went. A 12th century manuscript kept in the Biblioteca Nacional in Madrid shows the operation of the fire-tube.

A re-creation of the device using heated light crude oil with pine resin dissolved in it produced a jet of flame, along with a loud roar and much smoke, for a distance of 15 metres. A target “enemy ship” — actually a small sailing boat — was engulfed in flames and destroyed in a minute or so.

So, there was no real mystery about Greek fire, just a dangerous weapon (to both operator and enemy) which would have been most effective given appropriate conditions.

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Celebrating the centenary of a devastating astronomical event

The December 2007 issue of the Journal of the British Astronomical Association contained a list of anniversaries in the field of astronomy that will occur in 2008. Among the anniversaries of various obscure discoverers of various astronomical phenomena is the centenary on 30 June of the famous Tunguska “meteorite” which exploded over Siberia, near the Tunguska River.

Because of the remoteness of the area, and the political situation in Russia during the early part of the 20th century, it was many years before an expedition was mounted to the site of the explosion. However, the investigators found an amazing sight. Millions of fir trees had been flattened, and were lying on the ground facing away from the centre of the explosion. Some, at the epicentre, were still upright but had been stripped of branches.

The scene bore some resemblance to the devastation wrought by the two atomic bombs dropped on Japan in 1945. This allowed conspiracy theorists free rein to their imaginations. Was the explosion a nuclear bomb dropped by an alien race? Did an alien space-ship — nuclear-powered, of course — crash and its power source explode?

Whatever did happen, there was no crater in the ground such as would be left by a large meteorite landing. There were few eye-witness reports, but some reported a very bright light in the sky, others a sort of vapour trail (before anyone had ever seen an aircraft vapour trail).

One possibility is that it was a small asteroid, like the asteroid Mathilde, which was photographed by the passing NEAR Shoemaker space probe in 1997. Rather unromantically, Mathilde is a pile of rubble with a density close to that of water.

This would mean that such an asteroid, on approaching our planet, could explode and fragment in the atmosphere with only the shock wave reaching the ground, which offers some explanation for the Tunguska phenomenon.

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