"The discovery of phosphorus is credited to the German alchemist Hennig Brand in 1669, although other chemists might have discovered phosphorus around the same time.[22] Brand experimented with urine, which contains considerable quantities of dissolved phosphates from normal metabolism.[4] Working in Hamburg, Brand attempted to create the fabled philosopher's stone through the distillation of some salts by evaporating urine, and in the process produced a white material that glowed in the dark and burned brilliantly. His process originally involved letting urine stand for days until it gave off a terrible smell. Then he boiled it down to a paste, heated this paste to a high temperature, and led the vapours through water, where he hoped they would condense to gold. Instead, he obtained a white, waxy substance that glowed in the dark. Brand had discovered phosphorus, the first element discovered since antiquity. We now know that Brand produced ammonium sodium hydrogen phosphate, (NH4)NaHPO4. While the quantities were essentially correct (it took about 1,100 L of urine to make about 60 g of phosphorus), it was unnecessary to allow the urine to rot. Later scientists would discover that fresh urine yielded the same amount of phosphorus." - bob

cmon gold! ..... aww not gold :( - bob

Hahaha! Despite being a "scientist" it seems that choosing urine as the source was almost like sympathetic magic. If the substance he was starting with was a gold-ish color, surely working on that substance would create gold! - Spidra Webster

Nice. Can you imagine collecting 1100L of urine then letting it "rot"? I wonder if there were a lot of visitors to his lab? - Paul Buchheit

until it gave off a terrible smell... - Ashish