# Passarino’s white powder

**Known today as.** A very white powder prepared in Brescia “with great mastery” by Signor Giovanni Antonio Passarino, a man skilled in the spagyric (chemical) art (note XXXIX). Canale does not give its composition; it makes one vomit and purge, and he names it just after advising that well-prepared antimony is safer than hellebore, but what it was is not recorded.

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

## What did Canale use it for?

A safe and powerful vomit, by which difficult cases were healed (ch. 5).

## What does modern science say?

Its nature is unknown. Antimony, which Canale recommends just before it, caused more debate than any other chemical medicine of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, a reviewer of McCallum’s history notes.

## Pharmacognosy and toxicology

- **unknown**: Canale does not give the recipe
- **antimony oxide or mercurous chloride**: a guess only: Canale recommends prepared antimony as a vomit just before naming the powder

**Mechanism.** A “safe and powerful vomit” by a named maker skilled in the spagyric art, the language of the chemical medicines then in dispute; Canale places it right after his advice that well-prepared antimony is a safer vomit than hellebore. Without the recipe the identification is a guess, not a fact.

**Dose.** Canale gives his prepared antimony at four to eight grains, in powder or infusion; the dose of the powder itself is not legible in the read copy.

**Standing.** Unidentified; it belongs to the century from about 1560 to 1660 that has been called the “Antimony War,” between Galenists and iatrochemists.

## Sources

- Review of R. I. McCallum, *Antimony in Medical History* (Pentland Press, 1999). *Bulletin of the History of Medicine* (2000). doi:10.1353/bhm.2000.0064
- Canale, F. (1622). *Discerning and Healing the Bewitched*, ch. 5.

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*Passarino’s white powder.* In *Materia Medica*, edited by B. C. P. Statema. Version 1, revised 2026-10-03. The Thinking Press. https://thethinkingpress.org/materia-medica/passarinos-white-powder

Historical description, not medical advice.