Greek Fire and re-usable laxatives.
Entry posted by Pertinax
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I have encountered a case today of a person suffering systemic poisoning by antimony trisulphide. This is fairly unusual , but not impluasible as he has been working with heavy machine bearings which contain an alloy of antimony .Antimony has a very strange history as a medicine, a cosmetic , part of a weapon system and a medieval re-usable laxative. Antimony is toxic if one has more than 100 milligrams in the body, indeed 2 mg is the norm for an adult. Rather unfortunately it has had a long vogue as a medication, and indeed in some modern contexts is used in the eye as a granular powder by certain devout Muslims emulating the Prophet (I am told that its stings unpleasantly).
It is not a true metal rather a metalloid and its sister element is our old friend arsenic, but unlike arsenic it is not easily lost from the body.Antimony converts to a far more deadly gaseous form , stibine (a hydride of antimony, SbH3).Dioscorides was familiar with the sulfide stibi as it was then known , which was used for skin complaints and burns. The vogue for medication gathered pace in the 16th C , doctors and vets using it abundantly as an antimony salt of tartaric acid ..inducing instant vomiting and purging "ill humors" from the body At this time wine was often left overnight in an antimony receptacle to achieve a similar purpose.It is suggested that Mozart died (or hastened his own end) by being fond of using antimony tartrate , his death throes being identical to those caused by antimony poisoning.
Stibinite (the sulphide mineral compound) was used by the Ancient Egyptians as mascara, kohl being the term you may well be familiar with, and the pigment "Naples yellow" made well into the 20th C is from the same mineral base (if precipitated out of solution the mineral is orange red rather than black as the natural mineral).
So how does Greek Fire get into the equation? The suggestion is that , given the impossibility of extinguishing this ordnance once the siphons had launched it, that the possible admixture was crude oil , stibinite and saltpetere. This mix is highly flammable and cannot be extinguished with water.Once stibinite ignites it produces a great deal of heat. We cannot know the recipe as, of course, divulgence meant death. In modern warfare oddly enough the sulfide is used in paints to reflect infrared , so your camo paint contains antimony.
And the laxatives? In the middle ages antimony metal pills were sold as "re-usable" pills..the constipated person swallowed one (about pea size) vomited and otherwise discharged effluvia, and the pill was retrived from said discharge for future use.It is said that such pills were passed down from generation to generation...
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