Thus, from the parade, ostentation, and mysterious secrecy, with which this medicine has been published, from its resemblance to the Berlin specific febrifuge, from its being prepared from an arsenical mineral, and easily converted into a noxious substance; from the difficulty of ascertaining the dose, and conducting its operation, and from the necessity of calling in other medical aids to its assistance; from the incompetency of the generality of the witnesses in its favour; from the unfair conclusions drawn from their testimony; from the dangerous symptoms and fatal consequences, which have followed its administration; from the inaccuracy and inconsistency of its Inventor; and from the increase of the bills of mortality during its general use, it appears, not only, that no proof of its salutary efficacy has been produced, but that many circumstances and facts, which have been perverted to that purpose, concur to demonstrate its general and indiscriminate application to be highly dangerous to mankind, to whom, to borrow the language of the Inventor, _it is not material, whether they lose their lives by ignorance, mistake, or design_. FOOTNOTES [1] Prelati enim, et fratres, me jejuniis macerantes tuto custodiebant, nec aliquem ad me venire voluerant, veriti ne scripta mea, aliis quam summo pontifici et sibi ipsis pervenirent. Epistola Rogeri Bacon ad Clement. IV. [2] Triumphal Chariot of Antimony. [3] Id. p. 3, and p. 118. [4] Paracelsus. [5] Triumphal Chariot of Antimony, p. 93. [6] Poppius’s Basilica Antimonii, Newman’s Chemistry, &c. &c. [7] New Dispensatory, p. 21. [8] Dr. James describes cobalt, from which the most virulent kind of arsenic is extracted, a ponderous, hard, fossil substance, almost black, not unlike antimony. Universal English Dispensatory, p. 288. [9] Triumphal Chariot of Antimony, p. 37. [10] See Schroder’s Pharmacopœia, Poppius’s Basilica Antimonii. [11] Philosophical Furnaces, book i. and ii. and Mineral Work, part first. [12] Ninth chapter of the first book of Surgery. [13] Triumphal Chariot of Antimony, p. 187. [14] Triumphal Chariot of Antimony, p. 188 and 189. [15] Triumphal Chariot of Antimony, p. 64. [16] Ibid. p. 49. [17] Lemery Cours de Chymie, p. 283. Geoffrey’s Treatise of the Materia Medica, tom. i. p. 41. Poppius Basil. cap. 8. p. 216, Newman’s Chymistry, New Dispensatory, &c. [18] Geoffroy Memoires de l’Academie des Sciences 1735. [19] Dr. James’s Dispensatory, page 282. [20] New Dispensatory, page 236. [21] Cronstedt’s Essay toward a System of Mineralogy, translated by Da Costa, Sect. 135. p. 223. London 1772. [22] See p. 14. Cronstedt’s Essay, sect. 236, and the New Dispensatory. [23] Newman’s Chymistry, New Dispensatory, &c. [24] Cronstedt’s Essay toward a System of Mineralogy, p. 223, 224. Stahl on the Arsenical Substance of Antimony. Hoffman of the wonderful, virulent and medical powers of Antimony, and the easy transition from one to the other. [25] Id. Ibid.