THE 
VETERINARIAN. 
VOL. XXXI, 
No. 370. 
OCTOBER, 1858. 
Fourth Series, 
No. 46. 
Communications and Cases. 
ON ANTIMONY AND SOME OF ITS COMPOUNDS. 
The compounds of antimony have long been held in 
estimation by horsemen. Some of them are of questionable 
efficacy ; others owe their action principally to certain con- 
ditional states of the contents of the prima via, and again 
others are of received or acknowledged value. Among the 
former are the sulphurets, and the combinations of these with 
the oxides. The last contains the potassio-tartrate, or the 
old emetic tartar ; this being considered, by many persons, 
the most useful of all the compounds of antimony : an opinion 
with which we are strongly inclined to concur. We, how- 
ever, advocate its exhibition in small and repeated doses 
rather than in large ones, being convinced that temerity in 
this particular £5s been often attended with fatal results, 
although the horse for a time appears to resist the in- 
fluence of comparatively large quantities of the drug. Anti- 
mony was well known to the antients. In the sacred writings 
it is called stibium, and it seems to have been used as a 
cosmetic. The Arabians were acquainted with it, and the 
alchemists endeavoured to form from it their elixir vitae, by 
which man was to be rendered unharmed by disease and 
immortal. Basil Valentine considered it one of the seven 
wonders of the world, and he ascribed to it extraordinary 
properties. In praise of it he wrote his f Currus Triumphalis 
AntimoniU Its name is stated to be derived from the 
following circumstance : The monk had given some of the 
black sulphuret to several lean pigs ; they ate it with their 
provender, and became fat. His brethren being nearly worn 
out by long fasting, he, reasoning like a Bacon, thought what 
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