Antimonial Wine is prepared from antimony, in conjunction with white Lisbon wine. It is employed as an emetic; but, if mixed with milk, this quality is said to be completely destroyed, and it becomes narcotic.
Emetic Tartar, which is much more employed in this country than all the other antimonial preparations put together, is formed from antimony mixed with its own weight of tartar, and a certain proportion of water, and afterwards boiled, filtered, and suffered to crystallize.
Butter of Antimony is obtained from a combination of antimony with corrosive sublimate. It is denominated by chemists muriat of antimony, and is usually a thick fatty mass of greyish white colour.
Glass of Antimony is a vitreous substance of reddish brown colour, which is occasionally used in medicine, but more frequently in colouring the imitations of yellow diamond, Oriental, Brazil, and Saxon topaz, hyacinth, emerald, and beryl.
James’s Powder, or Antimonial Powder, is a well-known medicine, composed of phosphat of lime and antimony.
An alloy consisting of sixteen parts of lead and one part of antimony constitutes the metal of which printers’ types are formed. This alloy does not differ from lead except in being considerably harder and more tenacious. The plates on which music is engraved are formed of a mixture of tin and antimony; and the oxides of antimony are used for the colouring of glass.
246. BISMUTH is a reddish white semi-metal, harder than silver, and composed of broad brilliant plates adhering together.
It is nearly ten times heavier than water, and is so brittle as readily to break under the hammer. None of the semi-metals are so easy to be fused as this; it melts even in the flame of a wax candle, and long before it becomes red hot, and has the singular property of expanding as it cools.
The ores of bismuth chiefly occur in Sweden, Norway, Germany, France, and England. This metal appears to have been known to the ancients. It was confounded by them with tin; and, even in our own manufactories, it is known to the workmen by the name of tin-glass.
It is not of much use in the arts; but its fusibility renders the working of it very simple and easy. It is employed in the composition of some of the soft kinds of solder; and is also used for giving hardness to tin and other metals. Amalgamated with mercury it renders that metal less fluid; and the addition of it to mercury and tin is found useful in the foliating or silvering of looking-glasses. Some manufacturers use it in the composition of pewter; but it is said that this ought not to be done, particularly for the formation of vessels intended to contain food, as bismuth partakes of the noxious properties of lead, and sometimes contains even arsenic. It is also occasionally employed in the fabrication of printers’ types.