It is found in Sicily, Hungary, and various parts of Germany: and is very common in several districts of China.
245. ANTIMONY is a compact metallic substance of brilliant and slightly bluish white colour, destitute of ductility, and about seven times heavier than water.
Its texture is laminated, the plates crossing each other in almost every different direction. It is as hard as silver, and so brittle that it may easily be reduced to powder, in a mortar.
In the state of the Connecticut, North America, it is said that antimony, in a pure metallic form, is found in such abundance that, in some places, large masses of it may be seen lying on the surface of the ground. The principal supply of antimony in Europe is from an ore which is found in Hungary and Norway, called sulphuret of antimony. The process of bringing it into a state for use is very simple. The mineral is put into pots, each of which has a hole in the bottom, and which is placed on another pot bedded in the earth. The upper pots, which are filled with the mineral, are heated. As soon as the antimony is fused it flows into the lower pots, while the substances with which it was combined remain in the upper ones. The antimony fixes, and forms cakes of the shape of the pots which receive it. In this state the metal presents, in its fracture, a surface thick-set, with long needle-shaped crystals, which, lying by the side of each other, compose, as it were, the whole of the mass. It is afterwards re-melted and cast into cakes for sale.
This metal, in a pure state, or alloyed only with a very small portion of silver and iron, is found in veins of mountains in some parts of France and Sweden, occurring in massive and kidney-shaped lumps of white colour.
The only mine of antimony in Britain, which is of any importance, is at Glendinning in Dumfries-shire. It was discovered in 1760, in searching for lead ore, but was not regularly worked till 1763. In the first five years about a hundred tons’ weight of antimony were obtained from it. This at 84l. per ton, produced the sum of 8400l. The undertaking was afterwards relinquished, but, as the price of antimony is now at least thrice what it then was, it is supposed that this work, if resumed, might prove an advantageous speculation. The vein of ore is only from eight inches to a foot and a half in thickness.
Antimony was known to the ancients. The earliest account we have of it is in the Sacred Writings. The passage in the Second Book of Kings,[[4]] which states that, on the approach of Jehu to the city of Jezreel, “Jezebel painted her face,” implies, in the original, that she stained her eyes and eyebrows with antimony, for the purpose of making them look black and large, a custom which, at that period, was prevalent in several of the Eastern countries. Antimony was likewise considered by the ancients a remedy against inflammations of the eyes.
This metal is the basis of many of the officinal preparations which are now in use; and it was the basis of many others which were formerly used, but are now discontinued. No mineral substance has so much attracted the attention, or so much divided the opinion of physicians, as antimony. One party extolled it as an infallible specific for almost every disease; whilst another described it as a virulent poison, which ought to be expunged from the list of medicines. It was on this metal that the alchemists of the middle ages principally founded their hope of discovering the philosopher’s stone; and, by a kind of good fortune, of which we can cite but few examples, it has happened that, in pursuing a chimera, they hit upon a succession of important realities. To the unremitted perseverance with which they tormented this metal, if we may so express it, the art of healing has been most essentially indebted.
[4]. Ch. ix. v. 30. See also Ezek. Ch. xxiii. v. 40.
The first rational account of the properties of antimony was given, about the end of the seventeenth century, by a French chemist, whose name was Lemeri. Its great importance in medicine will be seen by an enumeration of some of the most valuable preparations of it which are still in use.