Therefore this External Management of Mercury is only to be allow’d of, where either the Case will bear the Violence of such a Method, or outward Ulcers and Tumors require a particular Cure by Liniments, &c.
Nor is it improper to Remark that, We do hereby see how the Use of this Mineral comes to produce that Effect so often complain’d of, (tho’ not always with Reason) of making the Bones Foul or Carious. For, if the Laminæ or Fibres of These are already so much broken and spoiled by a Disease, as that the Circulation of the Fluids thro’ ’em can’t be maintain’d, they must necessarily be corrupted more by the Weight of the Mercurial Globules; tho’ here also it is plain, that the outward Use of this Remedy will be more to be blamed than the inward.
And indeed, as the earliest Use of Mercury was in Unguents and Emplasters, so most of the Prejudices and Out-cries against It are owing to Effects produced this way. For the first attempts of the Cure of Venereal Maladies by this Remedy, were learned from the Arabians [(123)], who having recommended Mercurial Ointments in the Lepra or Scabies, gave a handle to the Italian Physicians to try their Efficacy, in removing the Foulness of the Skin from a new and terrible Contagion; neither were they sparing of their Liniments, which they continued to rub in for 12, 15, nay, sometimes for above 30 Days together [(124)]. So that it is no wonder if they often met with very untoward Symptoms from so severe a Treatment, and if, (as some of them [(125)] do affirm) they now and then found Mercury in the rotten Bones of their Patients, who had, it may be, suffered too much both from their Disease and their Physician.
Thus much of Mercury. Let Us in the next place examine Arsenick, about the Nature and Composition of which Authors are very much puzzled.
This, in short, is either Native or Factitious, and each of Three sorts, Yellow, Red, and White. The Native Yellow is what the Latins call’d Auripigmentum; and this Olaus Wormius [(126)] makes Threefold. The Red is the Sandaracha of the Greeks. The White was not known to the Ancients; and indeed Theophrastus seems only to have known the Red; but Dioscorides describes both Red and Yellow; Nicander had no Knowledge of either; The only Mineral Poisons He mentions are Litharge and Ceruss.
Orpiment and Sandaracha differ only by their greater or lesser Concoction in the Earth; and therefore from Orpiment Boiled in a close Pot Five Hours in a Furnace Fire, is made the Factitious Sandaracha, as perfect as the Natural [(127)].
The Factitious Yellow is made from the Crusts of the Natural Orpiment [(128)].
The Native White is more rare, but found plentifully in some Silver Mines in Germany [(129)].
But the White Factitious is of the most common Use of all; and it is, as Agricola tells us, no other than Orpiment again and again sublimed with an equal part of Fossile Salt, till it is brought to a Whiteness.
Orpiment and Sandaracha are mostly found in Mines of God; and all Metallic Writers do agree them to be the best Signs of the Richness of the Vein. This is Ground sufficient for the Chymists to take Arsenick for the Subject Matter of their great Work, as they call It; and they have very fondly accommodated some Ænigmatical Lines in the Sibylline Oracles [(130)] to this Mineral. Tho’ the Interpretation be strained, and not fairly made out, (the Author of these Verses, whatever he might mean, being indeed Discoursing of the Name of the Divine Power it self) yet very true it is, that this great Expectation from Arsenick is as old at least as Caligula; that is, of more ancient Date considerably than the far greatest part of those Suppositious and Ill-contrived Compositions which do now bear the Name of Oracles: For that Covetous Emperor, as Pliny relates [(131)], ordered a great quantity of Orpiment to be wrought upon, that He might extract Gold out of It, and made some; but as it usually happens in such like Attempts, the quantity did not answer the Expence.