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Long before sulfur entered medicine, industry or war, microorganisms helped create the yellow crystals displayed here. Contrary to popular belief, most native sulfur formed not in volcanoes but in sedimentary rocks through chemical processes involving bacteria. Over centuries, sulfur became essential to alchemy, gunpowder and, later, the manufacture of sulfuric acid, one of the foundations of modern chemistry. Although the specimens displayed here are native sulfur, Lyon’s nineteenth-century chemical industry relied largely on sulfur extracted from pyrite, an iron sulfide known as “fool’s gold”. Mined near Sain-Bel, west of the city, pyrite supplied the chemical works of Perrache, Pierre-Bénite and Saint-Fons, linking sulfur’s different mineral forms to the geological and industrial history of the Rhône.
Collection of Musée des Confluences, Lyon
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