a blackish mineral substance, staining the hands, full of long, shining, needle-like striae, hard, brittle, and considerably heavy. It is found in different parts of Europe, as Bohemia, Saxony, Transylvania, Hungary, France, and England; commonly in mines by itself, intermixed with earth and stony matters. Sometimes it is blended with the richer ores of silver, and renders the extraction of that metal difficult, by volatilizing a part of the silver, or, in the language of the miners, robbing the ore. Antimony is the stibium of the ancients; by the Greeks called στίβας. The reason of its modern denomination, antimony, is usually referred to Basil Valentine, a German monk, who, as the tradition relates, having thrown some of it to the hogs, observed that, after purging them violently, they immediately grew fat upon it. This made him think, that by giving his fellow-monks a like dose, they would be the better for it. The experiment, however, succeeded so ill, that they all died of it; and the medicine thenceforward was called antimony, q.d. anti-monk. Antimony at first was used only in the composition of paint. Scripture describes it as a sort of paint with which the women blackened their eyebrows. Its modern uses are very numerous and important. It is a common ingredient in specula or burning concaves, serving to give the composition a finer texture. It makes a part in bell-metal, and renders the sound clearer. It is mingled with tin to make it harder, whiter, and more sonorous; and with lead, in the casting of printers' letters, to render them smoother and firmer. It is also a general help in the melting of metals, and especially in the casting of cannon-balls. It is likewise made use of for purifying and heightening the colour of gold. For a long time this mineral was esteemed poisonous. In 1566 its use was prohibited in France by an edict of parliament; and in 1609 one Besnier was expelled the faculty for having administered it. The edict was repealed in 1650, antimony having a few years before been received into the number of purgatives. In 1668 a new edict came forth, forbidding its use by any but doctors of the faculty. It is now universally allowed that pure antimony in its crude state has no noxious quality, and that though many of its preparations are most virulently emetic and cathartic, yet, by a slight alteration or addition, they lose their virulence, and become mild in their operation. Its virtues in the diseases of animals are greatly extolled.