Though it is asserted that antimonial preparations may be so directed as to vomit, purge, or sweat according to the intention of the prescriber, yet those who have had much experience will not obstinately defend the assertion, since nothing perhaps is more difficult than to foretel their effects when administered alone. If they are combined with other medicines their operation may be more certainly directed, since by opium they may be determined to the skin, by senna or manna they may be carried off by the intestines, and by an addition of ipecacuan or oxymel of squills they may be rendered emetic.
But much prudence and skill are requisite in conducting the operation of these compound medicines. For tho’ no danger were to be apprehended from joining antimonials with emetics or purgatives, yet, by unskilful combinations, the peculiar efficacy of antimony may be destroyed; and by opiates those virulent particles may be retained, and prove noxious, which would have been carried off, without any other inconvenience than what might arise from the violence of their operation.
Upon the whole, the evidence in favour of antimony and its preparations is too slight to justify the exaggerated encomiums with which it has been extolled: it contains in its crude state, and in all its preparations, such virulent particles as may, by slight accidents, become poisonous in the stomach: well-attested instances of remarkable cures performed by it are few; cases in which it has failed or been prejudicial, numerous; the reports of chymists and physicians concerning it are various and contradictory; its effects are precarious, and more skill, experience and attention requisite to conduct its operation than are to be expected among the generality, even of regular practitioners[71]. It is therefore very improper for common use; and as there is no certain rule to direct the management of it, every physician must form his judgment by comparing his own observations with the opposite and contradictory assertions of others.
It would be imprudent to reprobate a medicine which, in some instances, has certainly performed such cures as are seldom obtained by milder methods. No bounds are to be fixed to discreet and experienced practitioners, who, on mature deliberation, may determine the propriety of hazarding, in particular circumstances, a violent and precarious remedy, and can conduct its operation with skill and sagacity. Yet the present indiscriminate use of antimony, which is now grown up into a fashion too formidable to be attacked with much hope of success, must, after a candid and impartial examination, be condemned as pernicious.
SECTION V.
Of the Secret Antimonial Medicines, and particularly of the fever-powder.
If the difficulty of conducting the operation of antimony, renders the general application of it, in regular practice, dangerous, it must, as a secret remedy, in the hands of those who have no medicinal skill, be still more pernicious. But as some secrets, now, universally extolled, are avowed, by their proprietors, to be preparations of antimony, let us next proceed to examine their claim to the high character which they have obtained. For this purpose the fever-powder may be selected, since if the impropriety and danger of its general use should be demonstrated, the arguments in favour of less celebrated secrets will not require a serious refutation.
Unpleasing as the task may be, and however odious, to some, it may render the man who undertakes it, yet the great importance of life and health requires, that the precepts of the most illustrious physicians should not pass without examination, nor secret and mysterious remedies be adopted with implicit faith.