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 XIV

MEDICINES FROM THE METALS

Metals are all identical in their essence; they only differ by their form. The form depends on accidental causes which the artist must seek to discover. The accidents interfere with the regular combinations of sulphur and mercury; for every metal is a combination of these two substances. When pure sulphur meets pure mercury, gold results sooner or later by the action of nature. Species are immutable and cannot be transformed from one into the other; but lead, copper, iron, silver, &c., are not species. They only appear to be from their diverse forms.


 * —"De Alchemia." (About 1250.)

ANTIMONY.

Some of the old writers insisted that antimony (the native sulphide) was used as a medicine by Hippocrates who called it Tetragonon, which simply meant four-*cornered, and of which we also know that it was made up with the milk of a woman. The reason which the iatro-chemists gave for believing that this compound was made from antimony was worthy of the age when it was the practice to apply enigmatic names to medicinal substances, a practice, however, quite foreign to Hippocrates. They understood the term to imply four natures or virtues, and they said antimony had four virtues, namely, sudorific, emetic, purgative, and cordial; therefore tetragonon meant antimony.