The pots, lest they should become defective, are moulded from the best
potters' clay, for if there are defects the quicksilver flies out in the fumes.
If the fumes give out a very sweet odour it indicates that the quicksilver is
being lost, and since this loosens the teeth, the smelters and others standing by,
warned of the evil, turn their backs to the wind, which drives the fumes in
the opposite direction ; for this reason, the building should be open around
the front and the sides, and exposed to the wind. If these pots are made
of cast copper they last a long time in the fire. This process for reducing the
ores of quicksilver is used by most people.
In a similar manner the antimony ore,67 if free from other metals, is reduced
in upper pots which are twice as large as the lower ones. Their size, however,
depends on the cakes, which have not the same weight everywhere ; for in
some places they are made to weigh six librae, in other places ten, and elsewhere twenty. When the smelter has concluded his operation, he extinguishes the fire with water, removes the lids from the pots, throws earth mixed
with ash around and over them, and when they have cooled, takes out the
cakes from the pots.
"Agricola draws no sharp line of distinction between antimony the metal, and its
sulphide. He uses the Roman term stibi or stibium {Interpretatio,—Spiesglas) throughout
this book, and evidently in most cases means the sulphide, but in others, particularly in
parting gold and silver, metallic antimony would be reduced out. We have been in much
doubt as to the term to introduce into the text, as the English " stibnite " carries too much
precision of meaning. Originally the " antimony " of trade was the sulphide. Later, with
the application of that term to the metal, the sulphide was termed " grey antimony," and
we have either used stibium for lack of better alternative, or adopted " grey antimony."
The method described by Agricola for treating antimony sulphide is still used in the Harz, in
Bohemia, and elsewhere. The stibnite is liquated out at a low heat and drips from the upper
to the lower pot. The resulting purified antimony sulphide is the modern commercial
" crude antimony " or " grey antimony."
Historical Note on the Metallurgy of Antimony. The Egyptologists have
adopted the term " antimony " for certain cosmetics found in Egyptian tombs from a very
early period. We have, however, failed to find any reliable analyses which warrant this
assumption, and we believe that it is based on the knowledge that antimony was used as a
base for eye ointments in Greek and Roman times, and not upon proper chemical investigation. It may be that the ideograph which is interpreted as antimony may really mean that
substance, but we only protest that the chemist should have been called in long since. In
St. Jerome's translation of the Bible, the cosmetic used by Jezebel (n. Kings ix, 30) and
by the lady mentioned by Ezekiel (xxiii, 40), " who didst wash thyself and paintedst thine
eyes " is specifically given as stibio. Our modern translation carries no hint of the composition
of the cosmetic, and whether some of the Greek or Hebrew MSS. do furnish a basis for such
translation we cannot say. The Hebrew term for this mineral was kohl, which subsequently
passed into " alcool " and " alkohol " in other languages, and appears in the Spanish Bible
in the above passage in Ezekiel as alcoholaste. The term antimonium seems to have been
first used in Latin editions of Geber published in the latter part of the 15th Century. In
any event, the metal is clearly mentioned by Dioscorides (ist Century), who calls it stimmi,
and Pliny, who termed it stibium, and they leave no doubt that it was used as a cosmetic for
painting the eyebrows and dilating the eyes. Dioscorides (v, 59) says : " The best stimmi
" is very brilliant and radiant. When broken it divides into layers with no part earthy or
" dirty ; it is brittle. Some call it stimmi, others platyophthalmon (wide eyed) ; others
" larbason, others gynaekeion (feminine). . . . It is roasted in a ball of dough with
" charcoal until it becomes a cinder. . . . It is also roasted by putting it on live charcoal
" and blowing it. If it is roasted too much it becomes lead." Pliny states (xxxm, 33 and
34) : " In the same mines in which silver is found, properly speaking there is a stone froth.
" It is white and shining, not transparent ; is called stimmi, or stibi, or alabastrum, and larbasis.
" There are two kinds of it, the male and the female. The most approved is the female, the
" male being more uneven, rougher, less heavy, not so radiant, and more gritty. The female
" kind is bright and friable, laminar and not globular. It is astringent and refrigerative,
" and its principal use is for the eyes. . . . It is burned in manure in a furnace, is
" quenched with milk, ground with rain water in a mortar, and while thus turbid it is poured
" into a copper vesselçjand purified with nitrum .... above all in roasting it care
