Mother liquor is the dark blood-red water that remains after common salt precipitates out of brine. An eighteenth-century London chemist named John Brown discovered that Epsom salt could be boiled out of the mother liquor without sulphuric acid. Brown also found another salt in the liquid. The study of this third salt, now known to be magnesium chloride, unleashed a chain of discoveries, including Davy’s 1808 announcement that he had found a new element, magnesium. In 1828, Antoine Bussy isolated workable quantities of the metal, and an industry was born. Magnesium is used to prevent corrosion
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