BISMUTH.
Bismuth, the metal, was not known to the ancients nor to the Arabs. It was first mentioned under that name by Agricola, in 1546, in “De Natura Fossilium,” and was not then regarded as a distinct body. Agricola considered it to be a form of lead, and other mining chemists believed that it gradually changed into silver. The Magistery (trisnitrate or oxynitrate) was the secret blanc de fard which Lemery sold in large quantities as a cosmetic. He bought the secret from an unknown chemist and made a large fortune out of it. His process was to dissolve one ounce of the metal in two ounces of nitric acid and to pour on the solution five or six pints of water in which one ounce of sea-salt had been dissolved. The sea-salt would yield a proportion of bismuth oxychloride in the precipitate. Lemery made a pomatum, ʒi to the ounce, and a lotion, ʒi to ʒiv of lily water.
Until the latter part of the eighteenth century bismuth salts were regarded as poisonous and were scarcely used in medicine by way of internal administration. Even Odier, of Geneva, to whom we owe the introduction of this medicine in dyspepsia and diarrhœa, prescribed it in 1 grain doses with 10 grains each of magnesia and sugar.
Lemery says the bismuth of his time was a compound made in England from the gross and impure tin found in the English mines. “The workmen mix this tin with equal parts of tartar and saltpetre. This mixture they throw by degrees into crucibles made red hot in a large fire. When this is melted they pour it into greased iron mortars and let it cool. Afterwards they separate the regulus at the bottom from the scoriæ and wash it well. This is the tin-glass, which may be called the regulus of tin.” Pomet says much the same about the composition. He adds, “It is so true that tin-glass is artificial that I have made it myself, and am ready to show it to those who won’t believe me.”
Those writers belonged to the first quarter of the eighteenth century. A quarter of a century later Quincy is telling us that the metal called Bismuth “is composed of tin, tartar, and arsenic, made in the northern parts of Germany, and from thence brought to England.”
Meanwhile Stahl and Dufay had been studying bismuth and had established its character and elementary nature.
Liquor Bismuthi et Ammonii Citratis was introduced into the B.P. 1867, as an imitation of the proprietary Liquor Bismuthi, which Mr. G. F. Schacht, pharmaceutical chemist, of Clifton, had invented a few years previously. It was found that the official preparation differed from the proprietary one in taste and action principally because no attempt had been made to free it from the nitric acid used to dissolve the bismuth. This was corrected in 1885 by a liquor prepared from citrate of bismuth dissolved by solution of ammonia. This method has been further elaborated. Continental physicians have not favoured a solution of bismuth. They consider that the remedial value of bismuth depends on its insolubility; this view now obtains in England also.
Trochisci Bismuthi Compositi of the B.P. 1864, were believed to be intended to imitate the “Heartburn Tablets,” made by Dr. Burt, an eminent medical practitioner of Edinburgh in the early part of the nineteenth century, and sold for him at a guinea a pound. Notwithstanding the price, perhaps because of it, these tablets attained to considerable popularity. It was said that Dr. Burt and his apprentices made all he supplied in his kitchen. Some said that his tablets contained no bismuth, the antacid properties being due entirely to chalk. In 1867 rose-flavour was substituted for cinnamon in the official lozenges, and in 1898 the oxynitrate of bismuth gave place to oxycarbonate.