The Medical-Chemical Work

THE CHEMICAL BASILICA

...emerge without any additive; these are very white and are an excellent medicine for colicky pains. But in sublimation the process of heating a solid until it turns into vapor and then becomes solid again as it cools, used to purify substances, caution must be used lest the fire be stronger than is right. For if the heat is too great, the regulus the pure metallic "button" of antimony is melted rather than sublimated. If, however, the fire is weaker than is right, the vapors do not ascend, for they are difficult to raise.

Other flowers original: flores; the fine, powdery substance that collects after sublimation are made through calcination heating a substance to a high temperature in air to achieve oxidation or dehydration in this way: Take equal parts of the Regulus of Antimony and salt-nitre potassium nitrate. Calcine these in a crucible with the fire applied gradually for the space of three or four hours. Place the removed mass into a glass vessel and pour common distilled water over it so that the salt may be washed away. Once the regulus has been dried, mix in salt-nitre by weight once again; let them be calcined and washed as before. This labor is repeated a third time until the substance is fixed stable and no longer volatile when heated. Thus remain the Flowers of Antimony; if these are reverberated heated in a furnace where the flames are reflected or "echoed" back onto the material for three days, they become lemon-yellow. These flowers powerfully induce sweating if you administer from one scruple a unit of weight, roughly 1.3 grams to half a drachm roughly 1.9 grams of them with Blessed Thistle water original: aqua Carduibenedicti; a common herbal remedy for fevers. It is an excellent remedy for intermittent fevers, provided however that suitable purgings have preceded the treatment.

The Reguli can also be resolved into an oil in a cellar referring to deliquescence, where a salt absorbs enough moisture from the damp air of a cellar to turn into a liquid, from which an excellent medicine is produced. Reguli are also made with other metals such as Saturn Lead, Jupiter Tin, or Venus Copper; some use these for medicine, while others use them for tinting or dyeing metallic works.

Note moreover what a certain author says: Let the Antimony be moderately calcined, and let the calx the powdery residue left after burning be imbibed soaked or saturated three times with linseed oil (for linseed oil fixes it). Then, with Tartar potassium bitartrate and Nitre as is the custom, let a regulus be made; almost all of the Antimony will then descend into the Regulus.

The Diaphoretic of Antimony.

The Diaphoretic of Antimony A medicine intended to induce sweating to "break" a fever: Take one pound each of Antimony and the purest Saltpeter original: Salis Petræ. Mix them together after they have been pulverized. Then place a crucible among burning coals until it glows white-hot. Cast in two ounces, or thereabouts, of this mixture, and immediately cover the crucible until the smoke and noise cease. Afterward, having removed the lid, cast in more of the powder and close it, continuing in this way until the end. Finally, apply a heat of liquefaction (not so hot as for metals, but as much as is needed for it to flow like salt) for a quarter of an hour. When the vessel has cooled, remove the material. Grind the material and mix it, as above, with an equal part of Saltpeter, calcining and processing it in the same manner as described before. Take this ground material, sweetened by many washings to remove the caustic salts, and reverberate it in a closed earthen vessel for the space of twenty-four hours until the powder becomes white.
The Dose.

The Dose is 15 grains.