PROCESS XI.
Regulus of Antimony combined with the Acid of Sea-salt. Butter of Antimony. Cinabar of Antimony.
Pulverize and mix thoroughly six parts of Regulus of Antimony, and sixteen parts of Corrosive Sublimate. Put this mixture into a glass retort that hath a wide short neck, and let one half of its body at least be left empty. Set it in a reverberatory furnace, and having fitted a recipient thereto, and luted the joint, make a very small fire at first, to heat it slowly. Increase it afterwards by degrees, till you see a liquor ascend from the retort that grows thick as it cools. Keep up the fire to this degree as long as you see any of this matter come over.
When no more rises with this degree of fire, unlute your vessels, take off the receiver, and in its place substitute another filled with water. Then increase your fire by degrees till the retort be red-hot. Some running Mercury will fall into the water, which you may dry and keep for use; it being very pure.
OBSERVATIONS.
In our observations on the preceding process, we took notice that the purest Marine Acid, in the form of a liquor, will not dissolve the reguline part of Antimony. Here this very Acid combined with Mercury, and applied in a dry form to the Regulus of Antimony, quits the Mercury with which it was united, in order to join this very Regulus, as having a greater affinity therewith. This operation is a further proof of what we advanced on the subject of Mercury; to wit, that several metallic substances, which are not soluble by certain Acids when in a fluid state, may be dissolved by those Acids when most highly concentrated; as they are when combined with any other substance in a dry form, and are separated from it by the force of fire. Their efficacy is also further promoted by their being reduced, on this occasion, into subtile vapours.
The Marine Acid combined with the reguline part of Antimony doth not form a hard, solid compound; but a kind of soft substance, that melts in a very gentle heat, and also becomes fixed by the least cold, much in the same manner as butter; and from this property it hath its name.
Soon after mixing the Regulus with the Corrosive Sublimate, the matter sometimes grows considerably hot: this is occasioned by the Marine Acid's beginning to act on the reguline part, and to desert its Mercury.