One of the most famous of the antimony compounds was the kermes mineral, which it is understood was invented by Glauber about 1651. He made it by treating a solution of the oxide of antimony with cream of tartar, and then passing a current of sulphuretted hydrogen through the solution. An orange-red powder was obtained, and famous cures were effected by it. Glauber kept his process secret, but a Dr. de Chastenay learnt it after Glauber’s death from one of his pupils and confided it to a surgeon named La Ligerie, who in his turn communicated it to Brother Simon, a Carthusian monk, who at once commenced successfully to treat his brother monks with it, and soon after the Poudre des Chartres was one of the most popular remedies in France for many serious diseases, small-pox, ague, dropsy, syphilis, and many others. In 1720 Louis XIV bought the formula for its preparation for a considerable sum from La Ligerie. It has been agreed by chemists, Berzelius and others, who have studied Kermes Mineral, that it is a mixture of about 40 per cent. or less of oxide of antimony with a hydrated sulphide of the metal, and a small proportion of sulphide of sodium or potassium (according to the method of preparation). It is still official in the Pharmacopœias of the United States and of many Continental countries.
From the solution from which the Kermes had been deposited a further precipitate was obtained by the addition of hydrochloric acid. This, too, was a mixture, consisting of protosulphide and persulphide of antimony with some sulphur. It was the golden sulphuret which in association with calomel became so noted in the form of Plummer’s powder and Plummer’s pills. The powder was at first known as Plummer’s Æthiops Medicinalis.
It would be tedious to go through the multitude of antimonial compounds which have become official, and it would be impossible in any reasonable space even to enumerate the quack medicines with an antimonial base which were so recklessly sold in this and other countries, especially in the earlier half of the seventeenth century. The most important of all the antimonial compounds, or, at least, the one which has maintained the favour of the medical profession in all countries, is, of course, the tartrate of antimony and potassium, emetic tartar.
Emetic Tartar.
Adrian Mynsicht, physician to the Duke of Mecklenburg in the early part of the seventeenth century, is generally credited with the invention of emetic tartar. Certainly the earliest known description of it is found in his “Thesaurus Medico-Chymicum,” published in 1631. But Hofer has pointed out that the mixture known as the Earl of Warwick’s Powder, which consisted of scammony, diaphoretic antimony (a binantimoniate of potash) and cream of tartar, which Cornachinus of Pisa described in 1620, was really its forerunner, and he considers that the salt was recognised in medicine before Mynsicht published his description.
Glauber, in 1648, described the process of making Mynsicht’s emetic tartar from cream of tartar and argentine flowers of antimony.
Antimony Controversy.
No medicine has been more violently attacked or so enthusiastically praised as antimony. The virulent antagonism to it manifested by the Faculty of Physicians of Paris was unquestionably the exciting cause of much of the fame to which it attained. It is generally stated that on the instigation of the Faculty the Parliament of Paris decreed that it should not be employed in medicines at all. This, however, has been proved to be incorrect. Certainly the Faculty in 1566 did, in fact, forbid its own licentiates to use it, and actually expelled one of their most able associates, Turquet de Mayerne, because he had disobeyed their injunction. But M. Teallier has shown by documentary evidence that the decree of the Parliament did not go beyond requiring that antimony should not be supplied for medicinal use except on the order of a qualified physician. The action of the Faculty, although approved for a time, was later almost disregarded, and when the court physicians cured the young king, Louis XIV, in 1657, by the administration of antimony, the defeat of the anti-antimonists was completed. The repeal of the decree against antimonials was dated 1666, just a century after its promulgation.
Louis XIV was taken dangerously ill at Calais, in 1657, when he was 19 years of age. A physician (Voltaire says a quack) of Abbeville had the audacity to treat him by the administration of emetic tartar, and the King himself and his Court were convinced that he owed his life to this remedy. The opponents of antimony were silenced, though they did not yield in their opinion. Gui Patin, who had termed the new medicine “tartre stygiè” (its usual French name was tartre stibié), protested against the attempt to canonise this poison, and asserted that the cure of the king was due to his own excellent constitution.
To illustrate the earnestness, not to say the ferocity, of medical controversy at the beginning of the seventeenth century, the record of the expulsion of Turquet de Mayerne from the College of Physicians of Paris, in 1603, quoted from the minutes of the College and translated by Nedham, may be given. It should be remembered that Turquet was the favourite physician of Henri IV, and, nominally, his offence was that he had published a defence of his friend, Quercetanus, who had prescribed mercurial and antimonial medicines. The minute is in the following terms:—