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Updated: May 14, 2025
The chemist Höffer made the discovery of boric acid in the vapours, they would no doubt take note; but Höffer went no further; and it needed the man of both educated and practical mind like Count Lardarel to turn the discovery to account and extract the blessing.
The success with which Count Lardarel has employed natural hot springs for the evaporation of water charged with boracic acid, and other fortunate applications of the heat of thermal sources, lend some countenance to the latter project; but both must, for the present, be ranked among the vague possibilities of science, not regarded as probable future triumphs of man over nature.
At length a kind of prophet arose of a very practical character in the form of the late Count Lardarel, who, mindful of the fact that the chemist Höffer, in the time of the Grand Duke Leopold I., had discovered boric acid in the volcanic steam jets, looked hopefully beyond the exorcisms of the priests and the superstitions of the people to a possible blessing contained in what appeared to be an unholy confusion of Nature.
Subsequently the strong liquors were run to lead-lined, wooden vats, in which the boric acid was crystallised out. Had the industry depended on the use of fuel it could never have developed, but Count Lardarel ingeniously utilised the heat of the steam for all the purposes, and neither coal nor wood was required.
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