# Antimony

**Antimonio**

**Known today as.** The metallic element and its compounds.

Kind: Mineral  
Poisoning: Mercury, arsenic, lead, and antimony (https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/poisons/heavy-metal)  
Toxic: yes

> **Caution.** 

## What did Canale use it for?

Well prepared, safer than hellebore, four to eight grains in wine or conserve (chs. 2, 5).

## What does modern science say?

A strong emetic, and toxic. Its use was the great controversy of Paracelsian medicine: banned by the Paris Faculty in 1566, it was made lawful again by the Parlement of Paris in 1666. Its salt tartar emetic long served as an emetic and expectorant, and antimony compounds were used against parasitic disease into the 1970s.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **antimony potassium tartrate**: tartar emetic
- **antimony trisulfide**: stibnite, the ore

**Mechanism.** Antimony binds thiols as arsenic does, and tartar emetic irritates the stomach to vomiting.

**Dose.** About 100 mg of tartar emetic has killed; the “everlasting pill” of metallic antimony was swallowed, recovered, and reused.

**Standing.** Antimonials remain in use against leishmaniasis in some countries; none in the West.

## What lore surrounds it?

Kohl, of which powdered antimony (stibium) was a chief ingredient, was worn in ancient Egypt not only as adornment but as a believed protection for the eyes against the glare of the sun and against infection, and was applied to infants as well as adults. Its association with Cleopatra in particular belongs to modern popular retelling rather than to documented practice.

## What did the older authorities say?

**Antiquity.** As *stibium*, powdered stibnite was the kohl that darkened eyes from Egypt to Rome.

**Basil Valentine.** The *Triumphal Chariot of Antimony* (1604) made it the emblem of the new chemical medicine.

**Paris.** The Parlement banned it as a medicine in 1566 at the Faculty’s urging, and the ban was lifted a century later, after it was credited with curing the young Louis XIV.

## Sources

- Emsley, J. (2005). *The Elements of Murder*.

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*Antimony.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-09-25. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/antimony

Historical description, not medical advice.