Observations on Antimony Read before the Medical Society of London, and Published at their Request

Antimony was originally used by the Chymists, who, as they pretended to preternatural illumination, affected to conceal from the vulgar and profane, the sacred mysteries of the adepts, who arrogantly stiled themselves the favourites of Heaven. An exact chronological account is not to be expected in an art which took its rise among illiterate Miners, and in the most superstitious country in the world. How long it was cultivated by the lower set of people, with whom it originated, is uncertain; but Trismegistus, having, as is believed, first treated it in a scientifical manner, has been honoured by his successors as the Inventor and founder of the art. He is stiled a philosopher, a priest and a King, is said to have been instructed in all manner of learning, to have been the Inventor of medicine among the Egyptians, and to have lived about fifteen hundred years before the christian æra, or according to some about the time of Moses.

Chymistry, among the Egyptians, was joined to the magic art, it passed, thus corrupted, from them to the Arabians, where it was rendered still more unintelligible; and, in the course of the pilgrimages, and warlike expeditions to the holy land, it was imported into Europe, during the dark ages of ignorance, where it was still further vitiated by those impostors who scrupled not to corrupt the christian doctrines, and to pervert a religion, instituted to promote the happiness of mankind, to the purpose of oppressing them, by erecting, under the pretence of obedience to its precepts, a temporal and spiritual dominion over all whom they could intimidate or deceive.

In these rude times, when the nations of Europe were overwhelmed with ignorance and slavery, it was not to be expected that Chymistry could be much reformed. The little learning of that age was confined to the ecclesiastical orders, who avowedly reprobated all knowledge which was not derived from divine illumination.

Hence we find the chymical writers of that period boasting of their weakness, yielding up all confidence in their faculties, glorying in what they termed poverty of spirit, which was a state of absolute quietism, and betaking themselves to the invocation of supernatural assistance, on which they depended for that information which had been wisely placed within the reach of their natural capacity. An implicit submission to these monkish tenets was, however, strictly enforced, and all who presumed to depart from them, called forth the severest censures of the catholic church.

But, even in those times of ignorance an ecclesiastic arose worthy of a better age and happier fate. Roger Bacon, undaunted by the terrors of the church, boldly attempted to stem the torrent of superstition, and recal the world to truth and sound philosophy. Such of his writings as yet remain, are composed in a rational, manly stile, void of hypocrisy and dissimulation. He leads us to examine the works of nature and of art, chastly distinguishing those from the sacred truths of revelation, and clearly demonstrating their united operations to be far more wonderful than the pretended miracles of those who boasted of supernatural assistance, whom he justly censures as amusing the ignorant with the fumes of drunkenness, or the ravings of a distempered brain.