The alga “nostoch,” so-called by Paracelsus, who also described it as flos cœlorum, acquired the name of vegetable vitriol, and sometimes spittle of the stars, because it appeared after rains in places where it had not been seen before. XIV MEDICINES FROM THE METALS Metals are all identical in their essence; they only differ by their form. The form depends on accidental causes which the artist must seek to discover. The accidents interfere with the regular combinations of sulphur and mercury; for every metal is a combination of these two substances. When pure sulphur meets pure mercury, gold results sooner or later by the action of nature. Species are immutable and cannot be transformed from one into the other; but lead, copper, iron, silver, &c., are not species. They only appear to be from their diverse forms. ALBERTUS MAGNUS:--“De Alchemia.” (About 1250.) ANTIMONY. Some of the old writers insisted that antimony (the native sulphide) was used as a medicine by Hippocrates who called it Tetragonon, which simply meant four-cornered, and of which we also know that it was made up with the milk of a woman. The reason which the iatro-chemists gave for believing that this compound was made from antimony was worthy of the age when it was the practice to apply enigmatic names to medicinal substances, a practice, however, quite foreign to Hippocrates. They understood the term to imply four natures or virtues, and they said antimony had four virtues, namely, sudorific, emetic, purgative, and cordial; therefore tetragonon meant antimony. THE ETYMOLOGY OF ANTIMONY. The name of this metal is one of the curiosities of philology. The old legend was that Basil Valentine, testing his medicine on some of his brother monks, killed a few of them. “Those who have ears for etymological sounds,” says Paris in “Pharmacologia,” “will instantly recognise the origin of the word antimonachos, or monks-bane.” Another version of the monk story is to the effect that after Basil Valentine had been experimenting with antimony in his laboratory he threw some of his compounds out of the window, and pigs came and ate them. He noticed that after the purgative action had passed off the pigs fattened. On this hint he administered the same antimonial preparation to certain monks who were emaciated by long fasts, and they died through the violence of the remedy.