when was arsenic discovered

Arsenic as a chemical element was first clearly prepared and recognized in 1649 by Johann Schroeder, a German pharmacist, who prepared arsenic by heating its oxide with charcoal. However, the element itself was likely first observed around 1250 by Albertus Magnus, a German alchemist and scholar, who obtained it by heating soap together with arsenic trisulfide (orpiment). Arsenic compounds were known and used since ancient times, but the free element was definitively identified in the 13th to 17th centuries.