Bartolomé de Medina (born around 1504 in

Seville Seville (; es, Sevilla, ) is the capital and largest city of the Spanish autonomous community of Andalusia and the province of Seville. It is situated on the lower reaches of the River Guadalquivir, in the southwest of the Iberian Peninsula ...

) was a Spanish merchant known for his invention of the patio process.

Biography

In Europe, he learned the economics of

litharge Litharge (from Greek lithargyros, lithos (stone) + argyros (silver) ''λιθάργυρος'') is one of the natural mineral forms of lead(II) oxide, PbO. Litharge is a secondary mineral which forms from the oxidation of galena ores. It forms as coa ...

smelting, and, from a German man known only as "Maestro Lorenzo" or "Leonard", he learned how to efficiently use mercury, and a "strong

brine Brine is a high-concentration solution of salt (NaCl) in water (H2O). In diverse contexts, ''brine'' may refer to the salt solutions ranging from about 3.5% (a typical concentration of seawater, on the lower end of that of solutions used for br ...

", to extract silver from its ore. Around the age of 50, Medina moved to

New Spain New Spain, officially the Viceroyalty of New Spain ( es, Virreinato de Nueva España, ), or Kingdom of New Spain, was an integral territorial entity of the Spanish Empire, established by Habsburg Spain during the Spanish colonization of the Am ...

, leaving behind his wife Leonor de Morales and their five children. First settling in Mexico City, Medina worked on silver amalgamation for a year at the residence of Hernando de Ribadeneyra, before moving on to

Pachuca Pachuca (; ote, Nju̱nthe), formally known as Pachuca de Soto, is the capital and largest city of the Mexican state of Hidalgo. It is located in the south-central part of the state. Pachuca de Soto is also the name of the municipality of whic ...

. There, he built his ''Hacienda de Beneficio Nuestra Senora de la Purisima Concepcion'', which included paved surface ''patios'' on which he could spread ground ore. Located on Magdalena Mountain, he had access to running water and lower grade ore in the Old Discovery Mine dump. However, it was several months before Medina discovered that the brine and mercury method Lorenzo showed him in Spain also required

iron Iron () is a chemical element with symbol Fe (from la, ferrum) and atomic number 26. It is a metal that belongs to the first transition series and group 8 of the periodic table. It is, by mass, the most common element on Earth, right in f ...

copper sulfate Copper sulfate may refer to: * Copper(II) sulfate, CuSO4, a common compound used as a fungicide and herbicide * Copper(I) sulfate Copper(I) sulfate, also known as cuprous sulfate, is an inorganic compound with the chemical formula Cu2 SO4. It ...

. The gossans in Spain contained this naturally as

pyrite The mineral pyrite (), or iron pyrite, also known as fool's gold, is an iron sulfide with the chemical formula Iron, FeSulfur, S2 (iron (II) disulfide). Pyrite is the most abundant sulfide mineral. Pyrite's metallic Luster (mineralogy), lust ...

and chalcopyrite, but needed to be added to the ores in Mexico. This added ingredient, called ''magistral'', promoted the chemical reaction inherent to the amalgamation.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, pp. 90-127, . For this process for extracting silver from ore, now known as the patio process or silver ore amalgamation,

Viceroy A viceroy () is an official who reigns over a polity in the name of and as the representative of the monarch of the territory. The term derives from the Latin prefix ''vice-'', meaning "in the place of" and the French word ''roy'', meaning "k ...

Don Don, don or DON and variants may refer to: Places *County Donegal, Ireland, Chapman code DON *Don (river), a river in European Russia *Don River (disambiguation), several other rivers with the name *Don, Benin, a town in Benin *Don, Dang, a vill ...

Luís de Velasco Luis de Velasco y Ruiz de Alarcón (1511 – July 31, 1564) was the second viceroy of New Spain during the Spanish colonization of the Americas in the mid-sixteenth century. Biography Velasco was born in the town of Carrión de los Cond ...

awarded Medina a six-year

patent A patent is a type of intellectual property that gives its owner the legal right to exclude others from making, using, or selling an invention for a limited period of time in exchange for publishing an enabling disclosure of the invention."A p ...

. This patent covered the key ingredients of magistral, salt and mercury. Then on 10 July 1556, Velasco issued a joint patent to Medina and Gaspar Lohmann (Loman), for mechanizing the process using Lohmann's ''ingenio''. Lohmann's ''ingenio'', and one described by Miguel Perez, were influenced by Georgius Agricola's De Re Metallica. One quarter of his royalties were commissioned towards the Home and School for Orphan Girls. In 1557, his eldest son died on the voyage from Spain. Medina eventually returned to Spain and returned to Pachuca in 1565 with his wife and remaining four children.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Medina, Bartolome de 16th-century Spanish businesspeople Silver mining People of Spanish-Jewish descent