152 
SELECTED ARTICLES. 
ART. XXVII. — NOTICE REGARDING THE COMPOSITION OF 
JAMES' POWDER.* By Douglas Maclagan, M. D., Fellow of 
the Royal College of Surgeons of Edinburgh. 
The well known "Fever Powder" of Dr. James is a 
patent nostrum which has been in constant use for a century, 
both in general and domestic practice, as a febrifuge. Its 
mode of preparation has always been made a secret; and 
though it was avowed to contain antimony, its composition 
was not known, until Dr. George Pearson gave an account of 
an analysis of it, from which he inferred its composition to 
be oxide of antimony and phosphate of lime. The London 
College of Physicians, considering it to be a valuable prepara- 
tion of the active substance antimony, introduced into their 
Pharmacopoeia an imitation of the patent medicine, under the 
name of Pulvis antimonialis, which has subsequently been 
adopted by the other British Pharmacopoeias. This Pulvis 
antimonialis has always been prepared by roasting together 
hartshorn shavings and the black sulphuret of antimony, by 
which process the former, by the destruction of its animal 
matter, is left in the form of phosphate of lime, and the latter 
acquiring oxygen is converted into the second compound of 
antimony and oxygen, now called antimonious acid. Both 
James' powder and the Pulvis antimonialis are rather heavy, 
white, insipid substances. Their medicinal properties are to 
promote perspiration, and, if taken in large doses, to excite 
vomiting or purging. 
But though it was known from the specification lodged in 
Chancery by Dr. James, that his nostrum contained antimony, 
it was equally well known that it could not be prepared ac- 
cording to the formula there given, and therefore the exact 
state of combination in which the antimony existed was not 
ascertained. Dr. George Pearson, in the eighty-first volume 
* Read before the Royal Society of Edinburgh, 15th January, 1838. 
