126   ANTIMONIAL  POWDER  OF  THE  DUBLIN  PHARMACOPOEIA. 
OBSERVATIONS  ON  THE  ANTIMONIAL  POWDER  OF  THE  LAST 
DUBLIN  PHARMACOPOEIA  (1850,)  AND  ON  THE  MEDICAL 
EFFECTS  OF  THE  TEROXIDE  OF  ANTIMONY. 
By  Jonathan  Osborne,  M.  D., 
King's  Professor  of  Materia  Medica,   Physician  to  Mercer's  Hospital,  Ac* 
It  is  well  known  that  the  antimonial  powder  of  the  Pharma- 
copoeias was  first  adopted  as  an  imitation  of  Dr.  James's  fever 
powder,  but  the  opinion  has  for  a  long  time  been  gaining  ground 
among  practitioners  that  it  is  nearly,  if  not  altogether,  inert.  I 
have  given  it  in  various  doses,  large  and  small,  and  long  ago 
made  a  series  of  trials  expressly  on  this  subject,  but  could  never 
perceive  any  sensible  effect  except  when  combined  with  calomel. 
A  powder  of  two  grains  of  calomel  and  four  of  antimonial  powder, 
taken  at  night,  was  not  unfrequently  followed  by  perspiration  ; 
but  when  given  alone  it  never  appeared  to  me  to  have  any  effect, 
and  I  am  thus  fully  enabled  to  confirm  the  statements  as  to  ineffi- 
ciency, made  by  Mr.  Hawkins,  Dr.  Duncan,  and  Dr.  Elliotson. 
That  it  should  be  thus  inactive  may  be  explained  from  the  fact 
that  the  antimony  is  almost  entirely  in  the  form  of  antimonious 
acid,  and  that  the  proportion  of  teroxide  of  antimony  it  contains 
is  insignificant,  never  amounting  to  four  per  cent,  according  to  Dr. 
Maclagan,  and  totally  absent  in  some  samples  according  to  the 
experiments  of  Mr.  Philips. 
In  the  Philosophical  Transactions  for  1801,  Mr.  Chenevix  de- 
scribed a  mode  of  preparing  antimonial  powder  in  the  humid  way, 
in  which  teroxide  of  antimony  was  precipitated  from  the  hydro- 
chlorate  by  ammonia.  It  was  strange  that  although  this  process 
was  referred  to  in  terms  of  high  commendation  by  almost  all  the 
succeeding  writers  on  pharmacy,  and  was  admitted  to  possess  the 
great  advantage  of  uniformity  of  oxidation,  of  which  the  process 
by  heat  was  unsusceptible,  yet  that  it  never  was  admitted  into 
any  of  the  Pharmacopoeias.  It  was  not  till  the  publication  of  the 
Dublin  Pharmacopoeia  in  1850,  that  a  mode  of  preparing  the 
powder  by  precipitation  appeared,  and  in  this  a  great  improve- 
ment was  introduced  by  using  tartar  emetic  instead  of  the  solution 
in  hydrochloric  acid  which  Mr.  Chenevix  had  employed.  This 
*Read  before  the  Association  of  the  King  and  Queen's  College  of  Physi- 
cians. 
