542 ANTIMONY AND SOME OF ITS COMPOUNDS. 
was good for a pig was good for a monk, and therefore gave 
to them some of this mineral ; but never was the difference 
between a pig and a monk more clearly shown ; the monks 
all died, leaving no memorial except the fat pigs which they 
had not consumed, and the name given to the substance, 
anti moine . 
According to Professor Redwood, “Antimony was not 
allowed to enjoy the reputation it had acquired undisturbed. 
It was soon condemned as a dangerous poison, and violent 
contentions prevailed for many years with reference to the 
use of antimony in medicine. To such a height was this 
controversy carried, that in 1566 a decree of the parliament 
of Paris was issued against its employment. The prejudice 
was so strong against it about this time, that an eminent 
Paris physician, Paulmier, was expelled from the faculty, in 
1609, for having administered antimony. A change of 
opinion afterwards took place, and antimonial wine was 
admitted by the faculty into the c Antidotarium/ published 
in 1637. 
It was much employed about 1650, although many medical 
men still considered it a poison, and strongly condemned its 
use. At length the doctors assembled, in March, 1666, to the 
number of 102, to decide upon the merits of antimony ; and 
a majority of 92 voted in its favour, upon which its use was 
authorised by parliament in April of the same year. Among 
other forms in which antimony was used as a remedial agent 
were those of pills and cups made of metallic antimony. The 
former, called pilule aternce sen perpetua, owed their efficacy 
to whatever action was exerted upon the surface of the 
metallic globule during its passage through the intestinal 
canal, and as this caused no perceptible loss%f weight in the 
metal, the same pill was used over and over again, and thus 
served for a whole family or a community.” “ This,” says Dr. 
Paris, “ was economy in right good earnest, for a single pill 
would serve a whole family for their lives, and, indeed, might 
be transmitted as a heir-loom to their posterity.” 
The cups are stated by Mr. Redwood to have been made 
of an alloy of tin and antimony. Wine being allowed to 
stand for some time in them it became impregnated with 
the tartrate, from the tartaric acid of the grape dissolving a 
film of oxide of the metal formed on the surface, hence the 
quantity must have been very variable. One of these cups 
has been recently purchased for a mere nominal sum, at a 
sale in London, and is placed in the museum of the Pharma- 
ceutical Society. Both pills and cups of metallic antimony 
have long since ceased to belong to our Materia Medica ; 
